Millennium
by Black Dragon6
Summary: Guardian spinoff and Sailor Moon crossover. My first full dive into the worn path of SM Ranma crosses! Let's see how many characters I can totally corrupt...
1. Split Happens

"The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."  
- Karl von Clausewitz

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."  
- Albert Einstein

"From time to time, the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots."  
- Thomas Jefferson

"War is an art, and as such is not susceptible of explanation by fixed formula."  
- General George S. Patton Jr.

"As much as some would like to think otherwise, man's history is a history determined, measured, and defined by warfare, with entire periods of time dedicated to the primary material or technology used to create the best weapons of the era. We are a species dedicated to annihilation. And from the beginning of civilization until the end of humanity itself, one truth remains: there is nothing that man, nature, God, or the Devil can create that we cannot destroy."  
- Ken "Snake" Yakata

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me, which are the vast minority here, are owned by their respective creators, who all get paid more than I do, seeing how I don't make any money off this. Those greedy bastards.  
This is a Guardian spin-off that splits from the original Guardian timeline at some indeterminate point in a future chapter, likely just after the android soldiers come into play. As far as Sailor Moon goes, I'm using mostly secondhand knowledge of the anime continuity, and this story takes place some time after the end of that continuum, such that the inner senshi are college students (18 years +). And while it does allude to future events in the original Guardian timeline, I would not consider any of them spoilers **persay**...  
Knowledge of the events and characters of Guardian are required for full enjoyment of the fanfic. It can be found and read at http/ Black Dragon Productions or any of its affiliates is not responsible for any brain damage incurred from the reading of this fanfic, or loss of employment or wages that come from reading this stuff at work and unintentionally informing your boss that you're not working on this month's numbers through hysterical laughter.  
Notes: ' ' indicates thoughts, indicates sounds, " " indicates language other than Japanese, though entire scenes that take place in different countries with different languages may omit them. indicates writing or displayed words.

Millennium  
Chapter 1  
Split Happens

The soft, tranquil sound of rain filled the back lot as the groups of men and machines stood at attention, perfectly still in the light downpour. Underneath their boots, the rainwater collected in small puddles on the concrete ground, mixing with washed-off lubricants and oil from the boomers and mechs bringing up the rear of the company. Bright red lights, emanating from the various optical lenses of nearly fifty assault boomers, cyborgs, and battle androids all glowed as they stood at attention, piercing the dark haze of the rain among the looming shadows.  
In front of the company, a single man paced the width of the lot. He was a tall, Russian man, with white hair that was combed back over the top of his head, and extended down to the base of his neck in sharp, spiked locks. Where his left eye should have been, there was instead a large metal peripheral over his face, with a red sensor lens to compensate for the lack of an organic optical device. The peripheral extended back over his ear, where it melded directly into his skull.  
Rain trickled down the cyborg's dark brown trench coat, water beading on the metal stars on his shoulder that marked him as a General, while the rain was absorbed by the cloth patch sewn onto the front of his coat that bore the image of a cobra wrapped in barbed wire.  
"Squad A! Deploy! Set up the defensive position once you reach your objectives!" The man suddenly shouted. As soon as he was finished, the six cyborgs and two battle androids turned as one, and marched into the alley in perfect synchronization.

"Ah, conducting another raid so soon, Yutchzky? You certainly have been busy lately."  
Igov Yutchzky turned and looked down at the source of the annoying voice, beholding a short, bald man in a polyester suit. The man had a pair of round, wire-rim glasses on, and was holding up an umbrella to keep the rain off him.  
"Yoshi Konta. What is business here?" the cyborg General said stonily, turning back to his troops.  
The little man shrugged. "Didn't have anything better to do, I guess. It's so much more FUN watching you use my weapons than designing them..."  
"Please stay out of way," Igov said, still using a perfectly neutral tone. "This mission is of great importance to strategic security."  
"Ah, yes. Resource gathering. At the depot where the government is transporting a load of radioactive fuels which may or may not be a salvaged alien spacecraft?"  
Igov's biological eye twitched. Yoshi's talent for personally gathering perfect intelligence was well-known, but it still irked the General, who most often faced losses due to poor tactical intel.  
"Yes. Depot is heavily defended, but no units on standby to reinforce transport. Quick strike should take transport by surprise." Igov lowered his head slightly to hold it under Yoshi's umbrella, and took a cigarette from his pocket and placed it in his mouth.  
"Actually, that's not completely accurate," Yoshi said, watching as Igov generated a sudden spark of electricity from his right index finger that lit the end of his cigarette. "The Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment will be on standby to intercept any threats to the shipment."  
Yoshi forced himself to keep from smirking as Igov cursed in Russian, spitting out the cigarette before he could even take a puff.  
"Is not... It is not their jurisdiction," Igov protested, managing to find the right word in his less-than-perfect Japanese vocabulary.  
"True. And I'm certain lots of people are making quite a fuss over it, too. But alas, wiser heads prevailed, and they now stand between you and your goal, per the norm." The diminutive genius watched as the taller man pulled his head up again, exposing it to the rain. "Such a strange and lucky group, to persevere in every battle! Robots, androids, cyborgs, clones, super-soldiers, mutants; all have proven inadequate in combat with them. Why, it begins to seem like they are the sole enemies we cannot hope to defeat! And with so many other powerful and strange things in this world!"  
Igov looked up into the pouring sky, ignoring the brief sizzling noise as his cigarette was extinguished from the constant downpour striking the ground where it lay. "Battle one cannot win, one must avoid." He lowered his head. "Forces strike before transport reach depot, take shipment and leave." Not striking against the depot defenses was dangerous, he knew, as that would leave the garrison there able to track and assault his forces while they worked to capture the shipment. The prospect of being assaulted by the forces of the DAPC, however, was much, much more horrifying.  
Yoshi shrugged. "Well, yes. That's all well and good, but-" Beep! Beep!  
Igov raised an eyebrow as Yoshi's pager went off, distracting the short scientist.  
"Oh! Well, that IS interesting." He turned and saluted to Igov. "Well, good luck with your operation! I have important, high-level sciency stuff to do!"  
"Yes, thank you." Igov frowned as he watched Yoshi leave, glad to have the little man out of his sight. Like all the leaders of the Freedom's Angels, he found the mad geneticist annoying at best, and downright frightening at worst. And while he had to admit that they had always been most successful when he and Yoshi combined their skills, Igov still found working with the man to be quite unpleasant.  
'Make the plan, and move the pieces. Like I've done a hundred times before and a hundred times again,' Igov thought, commanding the next squad to move out. 'My army, risen from the dead and reforged in steel will not be defeated! Victory or oblivion! I will not lose!'

"Is that them? I think it's really them!" the waitress whispered to her co-worker. "Look! It has to be!"  
The other girl frowned as she looked at the indicated booth. Seated at it were six people, four men and two women, and all of them were wearing dark blue nylon outfits, along with body armor. All were armed, and their larger guns were piled at the end of the table, earning quite a few stares from the other patrons.  
"Oh, come on! Those guys could be anyone!"  
"No, it's them! Look at that patch on their sleeves!" The first girl pointed discreetly to the large round embroidery on the bicep portion of their jacket sleeves, which had the image of a strange, alien-like fetus centered in some cross hairs. "And that guy!" She whispered, pointing at one of the men at the table's edge. He looked more like a Westerner than a Japanese native, and had short, sandy-colored hair which was held in place by a red bandanna. "Don't you recognize him from the papers? That's Ken Yakata! The infamous Snake! Those guys are Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment officers!"  
The other young woman began to take her companion's claim more seriously. "Holy... I think you're right."  
Glancing at the others sitting there, she was able to make out the other two that were recognizable from pictures taken and printed on the front of Tokyo newspapers; the relatively short woman with shoulder-length blue hair and a solid-looking build was Asuka Takami, the Captain and ranking officer in the DAPC. Sitting next to her, on the edge of the booth seat was a striking man of average height with a muscular build who had black hair in a short pigtail. That man hadn't gotten nearly as much media attention as Snake or his leader, but he was still relatively well-known among circles that concerned themselves with the prospect of Tokyo being consumed in a massive fireball. His name was Ranma Saotome.  
"What should we do? Should we call the police?" The first waitress asked nervously.  
It was all her companion could do to keep from facefaulting. "Idiot! They ARE the police! And what are you worried about? They're here to drink coffee, not kill us all!"  
"You don't know that!" The first waitress said timidly. "Do you think it's true that they eat their enemies' hearts to take their power?"  
"Oh, for pity's sake. Just give me the drinks."

Ranma sighed and leaned back in his seat, speaking to the trim, busty blonde woman across from him. "I dunno Sakura, I could think of a lot of things I'd rather be doing than sitting around waiting to MAYBE be called in to back up some Core guys. You'd think they could take care of themselves."  
"It's been a long time since Core has directly engaged any Freedom's Angels," Asuka muttered, propping her head up with her hands as she leaned forward, "the last real setback they suffered was when the Mark III androids annihilated the sixth division. The last time they fought the cyborgs, they were actually on equal ground."  
"Yet somehow, Core heavy infantry still run like frightened squirrels at the first sight of the walking dead," Snake said condescendingly. "It's pitiful. But on the whole, I agree with Saotome. Why do we have to sit around waiting for the chance to clean up Core's mess?"  
"Because we were ORDERED to by self-important, bureaucratic nimrods who are not obligated to care about our own difficulties," Asuka said seriously. "We have a lot of stuff to follow up on, too. Three T-virus outbreaks in the last week without any sign of a creep mutant bears heavy investigation."  
Sakura shrugged, but didn't say anything. Unlike most of the others, she had no desire to find the source of some vast outbreak of zombie-producing contaminants. As it was, she barely pulled through most operations alive, and it wasn't as if she contributed anything other than basic field medic knowledge (which had proven slightly helpful in a grand total of one mission). She'd take sitting around waiting for a possible engagement to actively seeking out zombie hordes any day.  
Her brother Kyle, the tall, muscular blond man sitting next to her, was not nearly so timid. "Well, I certainly hope they end up calling us in. It'd be a waste if they made all this fuss and nothing even happened."  
"It wouldn't be 'a waste', it'd be good luck," the last man mumbled sourly. He was relatively short and wiry, with short brown hair. "I don't want to take a crack at anything that two Core divisions couldn't handle."  
Ranma snorted. "Don't worry about it, Tiro. If they do need us, we'll swoop in behind the enemy and take them totally by surprise. It'll be easy."  
Tiro Yamazaki shuddered. Fighting the FA's cyborgs and new androids was NEVER easy, and although they were less common and less frightening than their mutant creations, they were generally more battle-worthy. To Ranma and Snake, it was just more fun that way. To Tiro, it meant he had to be that much quicker to stay ahead of the Reaper.  
Snake suddenly sniffed the air, and frowned as the waitress came over with their drinks and wordlessly began to give them out.  
Incensed by the sudden presence of tobacco smoke, the DAPC's weapons expert turned to look over the top of the booth seat into the booth behind him.  
"Excuse me," he said calmly to the man who had just lit up, "could you put out that cigarette, please?"  
Across from the man, a woman frowned at the clearly foreign man's rude bluntness. The man, however, turned and smiled at Snake apologetically.  
"I'm so sorry, but this cafe doesn't have a separate smoking section! Normally I would go outside, but it's raining so hard! Please forgive me!" He turned back around, and then took a deep drag off the smoke.  
Snake shrugged. "Oh. Okay."  
Then he grabbed the back of the man's head, and pushed forward to smash the man's face into the table. Wham!  
"I didn't ASK about the cafe's smoking policy, ash muncher," Snake growled, ignoring the woman's startled cry and the gentleman's choking as he nearly swallowed the lit cigarette. "NEXT TIME, put out the damn stick when someone tells you to!"  
Gasps and whispers started reverberating about the cafe, and Asuka sighed. "Christ, can't I take you people anywhere?"  
Kyle blinked. "Actually, Snake's acting kind of restrained... he didn't threaten to shoot ANYBODY."  
"We just got here," Tiro noted, "give him some more time."

Seeing that the management and the employees were having some heated discussion in the back room, Asuka sighed and pulled out her walkie-talkie.  
Beep! "Well, two minutes, and they're already working up the courage to kick us out. Any word from Core HQ, Junko?" Beep!  
Yeah, they said that covert teams were investigating a suspicious disturbance in front of the site of operations. It might be a prelude to an attack. Or it might be a guy hanging out near the tracks. You know how Core intelligence is.  
Asuka rolled her eyes. Beep! "At least they **have** intelligence," she murmured. Beep! Then she frowned, as if deciding upon something. Beep! "Pun intended." Beep!  
That hurts, Captain.  
Asuka dropped the radio. "Well, we're looking at an assault on a heavily armored and defended rail transport, with the likely intention of taking the cargo intact. Whaddya think?"  
Snake grinned. "Cyborg divisions with sniper cover. Possibly androids to serve as minor engagement units and distractions... probably Mark I's. Definitely boomer support."  
Ranma shook his head. "Mutants. Definitely mutants. I'm thinking creeps first to distract the soldiers, then carriers and maulers set up further back. Then you get a few higher-end androids to take the cargo."  
Tiro leaned forward. "4 to 1 odds against the mutant tac."  
"2000 yen," Ranma said, placing the bills in Tiro's hand.  
"I'll see that," Snake said immediately  
"1000 on borgs!" Kyle shouted, startling the customers who hadn't already fled the shop.  
"I'm still hoping they don't need us," Sakura mumbled.  
Asuka sighed. "I was actually referring to how you think we should go into this."  
"I move that we enact battle plan 7-B's 'scorched Earth' maneuver!" Snake said, slamming a fist onto the table.  
Asuka sweatdropped. "You want to call in a tactical long-range missile strike if we engage the enemy?"  
Snake frowned. "No! I want to call in a tactical long-range missile strike NOW! They'll never see it coming!"  
"... Because they're probably not **there**?" Ranma guessed.  
"Details." Snake countered.  
"Excuse me..."  
The DAPC crew looked over to see a young woman, apparently the assistant manager of the establishment, nervously wringing her hands as she approached them.  
"Uhm... I'm sorry but... the other customers... you can't... what I mean to say is..."  
Sweat began to pour down her forehead as police officers all stared at her with the same unreadable expression, waiting for her to explain her interruption.  
"W-Well... you're being very... um, loud, and... your tank is... er, maybe not double-parked, but... well, your guns are... they're just LYING there on the table... and-"  
"Do you want us to leave, or what?" Asuka finally asked. It seemed that if they had waited for the girl to finish, they likely would have been called out by then anyway.  
"Ye-Yes please!" The woman squeaked, holding the drink tray against her chest like a shield.  
With the kind of calm, silent acquiescence that indicated that they were entirely used to this kind of treatment, the DAPC officers got up and trudged out the door, stopping only to gather their respective weapons.

"I told you we should've stuck to street vendors," Snake mumbled as he pulled his jacket tighter around himself, trying to stave off the rain  
"You'd think a police officer could look forward to a cup of coffee without being thrown out into the rain," Tiro said angrily. "Do we not risk our lives day to day in defense of the common good!" He suddenly shouted, thrusting a fist into the air and attracting the attention of all the surrounding pedestrians. "Do we not bleed! Do we not suffer! Do we not face unspeakable horrors for the defense of the public! And for what! WHAT, I ask you!"  
"For a big, fat bonus at the end of the month," Asuka answered neutrally, opening up an umbrella above her head.  
"..." Tiro frowned, and then let his arm drop down. "Damn, she's right."  
Ranma walked past the others and headed toward the large, armored behemoth sitting in the thirty-minute parking zone along the curb.  
The Firestorm Mark VI was an advanced super-heavy battle tank whose plans for mass production were scrapped due to its outrageous cost and several aspects of its construction that were considered "unstable" or "experimental". Naturally, this made it perfect for the over-funded and under-staffed DAPC, who asked for the original Mark V to be upgraded to better its anti-anomaly capabilities even further after Snake had again overestimated its ability to withstand titanic levels of punishment in a firefight.  
The battle tank was twice as long as a large car, and almost twice as tall, with its chassis being so long that four tread bases had to be mounted instead of two. Much of the hull was covered by blue, angular planes of deflection armor placed in critical spots, with the uncovered portions being composed of a sleek, dark gray metal.  
The Firestorm was (as if Snake would have it any other way) constructed for the sole purpose of optimal combat ability, combining effective, ammo-efficient weapons, nearly impenetrable armor, shocking speed for an armored unit of its size, and cutting-edge fuel cell technology.  
It was not, however, intended for use as a mode of transportation in heavily congested urban areas, as could be ascertained from any one of hundreds of motorists struggling to get around the Firestorm's significant girth. Due to the width of the chassis, even while it was parked the vehicle stretched across the entire width of the next lane over, and crowded the only remaining traffic lane on that side of the street significantly.  
Not that Snake cared. He took the damn thing everywhere he could, and would have used it for personal transportation if Asuka hadn't drawn the line just before that and forbidden him to drive it while off-duty.

The top hatch of the Firestorm squeaked as the opening lever was pulled, and a decently-tanned girl with mussy red hair that ended mid-back popped her head out, raising a hand up to shield her eyes from the rain.  
"That was fast! So where to now?" Junko Chikiko asked, not really surprised at all that they had been kicked out. And not really minding, either. Being parked in the Firestorm had subjected her and Tycho, the current driver, to an endless barrage of honking and shouting that wasn't entirely muted by the tank's hull. When it was in motion however, people tended to be more polite to the huge, heavily-armed leviathan.  
"I'm thinking we should probably just meet up at the rendezvous point anyway, even if they haven't called us yet. Don't have anything better to do," Ranma said. The rain didn't really bother him, as he had made his peace with irritating torrential downpours **years** ago, but the hanging uncertainty of whether or not they were going to be flung into a battle zone was grating on him.  
"Yes, and wouldn't I just LOVE putting up with Captain Himadi's sputtering indignation about having us assigned as his backup, but I left my Aspirin back at HQ," Asuka muttered. "I'm in no mood to have some self-important windbag taking out his wounded pride on me. This will be less painful if we charge in **after** the shooting starts."  
"Well, I wish it would start already," Snake groused, "Damn terrorists sure are taking their time."  
Beep! Beep! Ding! Asuka blinked as the unique sequence of electronic sounds informed her that her cellular phone was ringing.  
"Ask and ye shall receive," she murmured, glaring at Snake as she flipped the phone open. "Captain Asuka speaking. What is this about?"

The other officers waited impatiently in the rain as their captain received instructions over the phone, each one briefly considering trying to take shelter next to her under the umbrella that, of course, only she had thought to bring. Each one in turn discarded the prospect, not wanting to risk being the nearest breakable object when the Captain was finished being given bad news when already in a poor mood.

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's new... I haven't seen one of those in quite some time... uh-huh. Understood. We'll take care of it... don't worry, we'll manage... YES, I'm sure we won't have to destroy the station in order to manage. Goodbye," Asuka twitched as she turned off her cell phone, none too pleased with being asked to restrict her squad's actions when being asked to split her already-scarce resources.  
"So what's up? Are we moving out?" Kyle asked, hoping he wasn't the only one who didn't know what was going on.  
"Well, this is a pinch..." Asuka bit her lip as she thought about the current turn of events.  
Sakura looked tense. "What's going on? That wasn't the call for us to reinforce the station?"  
"Far from it," Asuka said, sighing. "It would seem there's a youma devastating the general downtown area."  
Everyone around her blinked. "What? A youma?" They all said at once.  
"It's a class of monster that was relatively common a few years back in the Juuban area, back before the DAPC had been established," the Captain explained. "Tough, stupid, and they usually possess some strange abilities. Their attacks seem to center around the objective of draining the life from groups of humans, though this has proven temporary and non-life-threatening in the cases I've heard of."  
"I've heard of them!" Tiro said suddenly. "They're the monsters that were the main enemies of those magic cheerleader babes!"  
"Magic cheerleader babes?" Ranma questioned, sweatdropping.  
"Yeah! They'd show up in these tight little sailor suits with impossibly tiny skirts, and throw multicolored blasts of light at the youma!"  
Asuka's eyes narrowed. "How come you know such much about them?"  
"I happen to have been quite the fan back in the day!" Tiro said somewhat indignantly. "In fact, I think I might still have that Sailor Venus body pillow in my basement..."  
"Do ya think we can count on those girls to show up now and destroy the monster?" Junko asked worriedly.  
"No, we can't," Asuka said firmly, "because the DAPC does not recognize the jurisdiction of unregistered vigilante magical girls. All class B sorcerous units must be apprehended along with the monster, per our regular charter, if we encounter them during target neutralization."  
"We might have to arrest the Sailor Senshi?" Kyle asked, looking uncomfortable. He wasn't as quick to volunteer the information as Tiro was, but he had also been something of a fan in his pre-cop days.  
"I love witch hunts!" Snake grinned as he cocked his shotgun. "I'm up for that!"  
"No, you're not," Asuka said quickly. "We need to intercept the youma, but we can't abandon our backup position, especially considering the very real possibility that the youma attack is merely a ruse generated to distract us. Snake, you're going to take Saotome and Lieutenant Tekai and perform a sweep of the tracks down a six kilometer line centered at the station. After you have secured the area, if no enemy attack has occurred, you may leave once the transport reaches the loading station. Snake will be in command should you encounter enemy resistance. Should you encounter friendly resistance, then Kyle is in command." The distinction seemed odd to the others, but Asuka had seen her second-in-command in action, and knew better. There were very few officers who could stand dealing with Kyle for an extended period of time, which would help significantly if any of the Core officials wanted to complain about the DA's presence on the scene.  
Looking somewhat disappointed, no doubt because his chances of armed conflict had dropped from certain to likely, Snake saluted and turned away.  
"Do we get to take the tank with us?" Kyle asked. Not that the three of them could do much more damage with the tank than without it, but it made more sense to him to take the Firestorm to the Freedom's Angels rather than to the monster that might get stomped by glorified teenage cheerleaders.  
Asuka shook her head. "Youma have proven in the past to be mostly impervious to damage from small arms. Of course, none of the police that encountered them were well armed in the first place, but it seems prudent to keep the heavy ordnance where we'll most likely need it."  
"Fair enough. Moving out!"

As Kyle, Ranma and Snake headed for Kyle's car, Asuka turned toward Tiro and Sakura.  
"So we're going to have to fight a monster without them?" Tiro said nervously, "I mean, couldn't you have at least kept Kyle? He'll probably just slow Snake and Ranma down anyway!"  
"Yes, we're going to fight a monster without them," Asuka said in mock-whine as she walked past the Firestorm to her own car, Sakura and Tiro in tow.  
Sakura grimaced. "What if we can't get the tank to it in time?"  
"Well, then I guess you're going to have to shoot at it, won't you?" Asuka said sarcastically. Then she twisted her head around to look at the blonde woman. "You DO remember which end goes toward the bad guy, don't you?"  
"Yup!" Sakura said brightly, "Kyle got me a training manual!"  
"What was it?" Tiro mumbled, shaking off the rain, "'Combat: For Dummies'?"  
"No, 'Marksmanship: For Dummies'. It's a big help," she said seriously, not noticing when Asuka slammed her head against the top of her car before getting in. "Chapter one is dedicated entirely to not shooting yourself." She then opened up the side door, stopping momentarily to shake some water out of her hair.  
Tiro was about to say something dark and cynical, but found that nothing came immediately to mind. Even more odd, he couldn't feel the normal feeling of Impending Doom that normally accompanied a given DAPC mission.  
'Is something good going to happen?' He wondered, opening the passenger side door. 'Although, if we were REAL lucky, we'd get to see those Sailor chicks in action!'

"I'm baaaaack!" came a cheerful cry from the front door, alerting its inhabitants as a young woman burst through the door carrying bags of groceries. She was trim, with long blonde hair that was done up in two long ponytails that flowed from a pair of balls of hair mounted atop her head.  
The room's two human inhabitants, a woman with short blue hair sitting at a computer and another woman with long blonde hair tied with a bow at the top of her head who was lying on a bed reading, didn't bother to look up as their companion entered.  
"Hi Usagi," they murmured, unwilling to direct attention away from their current activities.  
The third inhabitant of the room, a small black cat with a crescent moon on her forehead, was less distracted, and she made a "tsk"ing sound as she shook her head.  
"Really Usagi, did you just spend half the week's grocery budget on chips and... pork rinds?" Luna raised an eyebrow as she spied something new among the salt and fat-loaded snacks.  
Usagi blushed. "Well, yeah. This girl at a party introduced me to them last weekend, and, well, now I'm hooked."  
Luna glared at the other blonde woman lounging on the bed. "I keep telling you, those parties are a bad influence! Minako, I wish you wouldn't keep dragging her off to those late-night bashes."  
"A 'bad influence'?" Minako asked, dropping the magazine to look at the cat, "What is she, nine?" Seeing Luna raise an eyebrow, and after taking a moment to appreciate that Usagi **was** one of the most immature people she knew, Minako rolled her eyes. "Give the girl a break. Other people go to parties to drink, smoke, and hook up. Usagi goes to leech snacks. She's doing fine."  
"Although you really shouldn't take her during her classes," Ami said.  
"In Usagi's defense, I must point out that she doesn't do any better in her classes when she actually attends them," Minako said, smirking. Then her smirk fell. "Wait... actually, I suppose that wasn't in her defense."  
"Aw, you guys are so mean!" Usagi complained, sitting down on the edge of the bed Minako was laying on. "Besides, I've passed all my classes so far, haven't I?"  
"Yes, technically a 'D' is passing," Luna drawled, "though it'd be nice for everyone if you could take a test without begging Ami to tutor you the night before."  
Usagi blinked, and then frowned, considering her pet and advisor's words. "Are you suggesting I use blackmail instead?"  
Thud! Luna fell face-first onto the floor of the dorm room, while Ami flinched, accidentally struck the wrong key, and then grimaced as she watched her character take a shotgun round to the chest.  
"NO! I'm suggesting you do your own work!" Luna shouted.  
Usagi considered it. "Well... you know, I DO have some good dirt on her..."  
"Hey! Don't talk like I'm not here!" Ami shouted, bigsweating.

Shrugging to herself, Usagi picked up her groceries and left to put them away, obviously not ready to commit to working harder on her studies on such sudden notice.  
Luna sighed and curled back up in her corner, trying to ignore the sounds of gunfire that emanated from Ami's desktop computer.  
It always surprised Luna when she looked back on her life with the Sailor Senshi, and then looked at how it had ended up turning out. She had thought of herself more as an advisor to a champion for justice rather than a conscience and guardian for a teenage girl, but once the threats from youma and various greater enemies had finally petered out to nothing, she had found herself trying to maintain a soldier hidden somewhere deep within a regular schoolgirl's body. Not an easy thing given Usagi's personality.  
For some reason, Luna had always assumed that it would be Usagi who would change and eventually grow up into a hardened warrior and regal, responsible queen, while the other Senshi would remain the way they were. Reflecting upon that idea, it seemed like wishful thinking now, as Ami, Minako, Rei, and Makoto had all taken to Senshi duty with unusual fortitude, and eagerly contributed to the fight in the best way they could. For all intents and purposes, Luna couldn't have asked for better soldiers; she just wished she had thought to ask to keep the ones she had.  
For some reason, Ami had developed a liking for video games, taking the element of annihilating hideous beasts and madmen, of which she was quite familiar, to the digital realm, and often spending days at a time with minimal food and sleep to hold Counterstrike LAN parties with a few other friends. And as strange as it was to admit it, her new hobby had made the genius Senshi into something of a slacker. A brilliant slacker who aced her classes and could have gotten into Tokyo University if she hadn't decided to stick by her less-than-brilliant Moon Princess, but a slacker nonetheless. Though the blue-haired girl still criticized Usagi about her studies, Luna was well aware that Ami had sacrificed more than one lecture to get a head-start in playing the latest Metroid Prime title.  
Minako and Makoto used to be hopeless romantics, who tirelessly sought boyfriends, yet maintained their chastity to wait for their "one, true love." Luna didn't know whether it was the modern culture, the college atmosphere, or common sense that eventually broke their fantasy, but evidently they arrived at the conclusion that when one was a magically-enhanced superhuman with a lifespan of millennia surrounded by normal mortals, the idea that you should only give yourself to one of them for your entire life would have left one pretty darn miserable as the centuries passed by. As it was, the two had taken to bouncing from party to party, and from boyfriend to boyfriend, in the way many college girls did, with the goal being to have a good time rather than snare prospective husband. While not strictly a bad thing, such deviant and loose behavior led to more serious problems, and Luna had spent several evenings lecturing the two girls about their actions.  
Rei and Mamoru, thankfully, hadn't undergone any such changes, though each had grown more and more aloof as they concentrated on their individual projects. Rei had taken her studies of the occult to a more serious and professional level, while Mamoru had landed an internship at a promising corporation which demanded too much time for him to spend much time with his fated girlfriend, much less attend school with her like her friends did.

"What're you reading, Mina-chan?" Usagi asked, coming back into the main room of the dorm.  
"Car magazine. Wanna get one," the other blonde said simply, turning the page. "Dunno how I'm going to afford it, though."  
Usagi blinked. "Won't your parents pay for it?"  
Minako sighed. "No. It was hard enough to get them to pay for all my college expenses. I don't think Daddy'll go for a car right now."  
Usagi blinked again. "Really? My parents were pretty happy to pay for college."  
"Are you kidding?" Luna muttered, "Your parents rushed out to the nearest shrine to give thanks to the Gods when they heard you'd gotten into a school."  
"Hey! I was always planning on going to college!" Usagi protested.  
"Of course you were. But your father had assumed you would have to get a job a McDonald's and stay home for twenty years, so he had saved accordingly. That's why he's so quick to send money whenever you ask for it."  
"That's not true!" Usagi shouted vehemently, "You're just being mean! Daddy wouldn't..." She stopped, then raised an eyebrow as a thought occurred to her. "Wait... just how much money are we talking about here?"  
Luna sighed deeply as Minako piped up again.  
"You know, I'll bet we could make plenty of money easily if we-"  
"NO!" Luna shouted, immediately jumping up with her fur bristling. "Minako, we are NOT having this discussion again! You are NOT allowed to make commercial appearances!"  
"Oh, come on Luna!" Minako protested, sitting up and planting her fists on her hips. "It's been two years since the Sailor Senshi have done anything but guest appearances in parades or at fan conventions! What's the big deal if we drop the whole stupid secret identity bit!"  
"NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!" Luna shouted, causing Usagi to wince and keep her own opinion to herself. "And I don't care if that moron Artemis thinks it's a good idea! The Senshi are NOT getting a sponsor!"  
Minako sulked, lowering her head to stare longingly at the luxury car on the page below her.  
Then she brightened. "Wait! What if we didn't have to reveal our secret identities?"  
"What! No!" Luna growled, really wanting this argument to end for the final time.  
"No, no, hear me out!" Minako said, pointing to her midriff. "We have all that white area on our costumes, right? So we just make some phone calls, and then put company stickers over those areas, like on NASCAR vehicles!"  
"Ugh. That sounds tacky," Usagi said, being quite fond of her Senshi outfit the way it was. "Besides, the red part of the Pepsi logo would totally clash with my skirt."  
"Or, wait!" Minako said, now standing up on the bed. "We could just modify our speeches! Check this out!" Clearing her throat, she then thrust her index finger at Luna, in the manner they usually reserved for their battles. "In the name of Gillette, provider of the world's closest, cleanest shave, I will punish you!"  
Much to Luna's horror, Usagi started nodding. "It works, actually... and the speeches **do** need a little more variety to them..."  
"Don't encourage her!" The moon cat hissed. "If you need money, go out and get a job like everyone else!"  
The part-time Senshi of Venus glared. "Oh, that's real rich, coming from a milk-sponging little-"

Beep! Beep! Beep! The three Senshi currently present all blinked as a loud, distinctive beeping noise filled the room.  
As Luna kept on looking surprised, Usagi, Minako, and Ami all checked their pockets.  
"Is my cell phone ringing? Doesn't sound like mine..."  
"Not mine. Minako?"  
"Can't be. My ring tone is 'One Week' by Bare-Naked Ladies."  
"Pager?"  
"I don't have one..."  
"Hold on... nope."  
"Is the alarm clock going off?"  
"At this time of day?"  
The girls all stopped looking for the source of the noise when Luna suddenly cleared her throat loudly, tail twitching irritably.  
"You girls don't remember that noise?" The talking cat snapped.  
The young woman all stared back at her.  
Luna groaned. "It's the Mercury computer!"  
"Can't be," Ami scoffed, turning back to her game of Counter-Strike. "The Mercury computer wouldn't be beeping suddenly, out of nowhere. Well, unless there was a..." she stopped in mid-sentence, realization dawning on her. "Oh, you have **got** to be kidding me."  
"Are you telling me there's an enemy attacking?" Minako asked incredulously. After so long without any fighting, and with Setsuna assuring the other Senshi that the major threats to Crystal Tokyo were long over and done with, the Inner Senshi had mostly assumed that they would finally get to live out the rest of the young adult lives normally. To have that calm suddenly shattered, and after so long, filled each one of them with a deep sense of dread.  
"And why not?" Luna snapped. "If an enemy DID decide to attack, now would be a rather opportune time, wouldn't it? Do you even remember what to do?"  
"Vaguely," Usagi answered honestly. "First we have to do the transformation thing, right?"  
Minako rummaged in her purse, muttering half-hearted curses. "Geez... transformation pen, transformation pen... Hey, 2,000 yen! Sweet!"  
"FOCUS, ladies!" Luna growled.  
"Got it! Venus crystal power, make up!" Minako shouted, raising her transformation pen into the air.  
Usagi ignored the flashing lights and pretty colors as she looked through her own purse. "On no! I can't find my transformation pen!"  
Luna flinched. "What?"  
"My pen! It's not in here!" Usagi looked panicked as she up-ended her purse, allowing her belongings to dump out onto the dorm floor.  
"Idiot! You don't use a pen! You use the brooch, remember!" Luna shouted angrily, jabbing a paw at the small piece of jewelry that had fallen out onto the floor.  
"I knew that... Moon eternal, make up!"  
As Sailor Moon's flashy transformation sequence began, Luna turned to Sailor Venus, desperately hoping that she wouldn't have to hold their hands this much once they got out on the battlefield. "All right, now call the others!"  
Venus blinked, then bit her lip as she rubbed the back of her head.  
Luna slapped her forehead with her paw. "What? What is it? Just spit it out."  
The Senshi of Venus blushed. "Well... it's just... we haven't had to do the whole 'Senshi' thing in so long... I mean, I kept carrying my transformation pen around, but I, uh... replaced the communicator with an actual compact."  
"Well, isn't that just fabulous!" Luna snarled, causing Venus to flinch back while making appeasing gestures with her flailing arms. "Now how are we supposed to contact the only two Inner Senshi who are in any shape to fight!" Given that Rei and Makoto had kept up their basic martial arts training while the others had quickly forgotten about fighting, Luna was pretty much counting on their help to see the Senshi through this.  
"You could call them on your cell," Ami suggested, causing Luna and Sailor Venus to blink in surprise.  
"Oh... yes, I suppose that would work almost as well," the moon cat muttered. Then she frowned deeply as she realized Ami was still on her computer. "Ami, hurry up! We need to go now!"  
"Just a minute..." A burst of gunfire erupted from her speakers, and a vein popped up on Luna's head.  
"Ami! This is no time to-"  
"SON OF A **BITCH**!" The bluette suddenly shouted, causing Luna and her two fellow Senshi to jump back in shock. "DAMN YOU, BLACKDRAGON74! ONE DAY, I SWEAR IT, I WILL GRIND YOU TO..."  
Ami stopped shaking her fist at her computer as she remembered that she had an audience, and immediately adopted a calm, cool expression as she exited the program.  
Then she turned around, her expression looking perfectly controlled. "So, what are we doing again?"  
"Monster attack." Sailor Moon reminded her timidly.  
"Oh. Right, right." She turned around and opened her desk drawer, taking out her own pen. She was about to transform, when she noticed the small black box that she kept perpetually mounted atop her computer monitor. "Oops. Better turn off the webcam," she mumbled, making sure nobody else was watching as she deactivated the device.  
Sailor Venus tapped her foot as she waited for her cell phone to connect. "Hmm, hmm-hmm hmm... Mako-chan! Hi! It's Minako! I... huh? Oh, okay, I can hold."  
"No, you **can't** hold! This is important!" Luna shouted.  
Venus glared at her. "Would you just calm down? Mako-chan! Listen, we have to... huh? Wait, who was that?" She blinked, and then she gaped. "Saitoma! You're joking! I am SO jealous!" She ignored Luna's hissing as she sat back down on the bed, chatting excitedly. "Well, don't leave me hanging! How was he? ... Really? I'd hope so! How huge? No waaugh!"  
The orange-skirted protector of love and justice jumped and hopped around on one foot, holding the other to prevent any aggravation of the feline-inflicted wound. "Ow! Ow! Look, Mako-chan! We've got a monster attack! We have to go! Meet us behind the football field in Senshi form!"  
"Good. Now call Rei! And no girl talk!"  
Venus nodded rapidly, then quickly dialed the appropriate number, keeping a wary eye on the agitated feline.  
Sailor Moon, meanwhile, was discussing their combat readiness with Mercury.  
"So, I forget, do we have weapons?"  
Mercury shook her head. "Not really, no. Though you have the scepter."  
"That's no weapon. That's just a pretty magic wand," the Senshi princess muttered. "Why don't we get weapons? The Power Rangers get weapons! AND giant robot animals! That's not fair!"  
Luna subsequently crawled under Usagi's bed, and covered her head with her paws as she decided not to head out to the battlefield with the Senshi after all. 'I did the best I could. I pushed them in the right direction. It's up to them now. I have had just about enough of this.'

Moving stealthily toward the tracks, the cyborg vanguard forces crawled through the high grass on their hands and knees, the optical scanners keeping a careful bead on the approaching armored train.  
The exact time the train would be arriving had not been disclosed to any government or military agency in order to minimize the chances of an assault like the one being mounted. Igov had found such paranoia quite admirable, and had taken it as a challenge to maneuver his troops close enough to identify the transport and attack it before it got to the station, but not close enough so that their approach would be detected by the armored sentries guarding the station on high alert.  
Since then, two other large trains had passed by, and they had managed to get an infiltrator close enough in each case to scan the cargo and determine that they were not the transports they were looking for.  
The cybernetic soldier on point held up his hand to stall the men crawling through the brush behind him, and then he brought his hand to the optical relay mounted over his eyes.  
Scan complete. The soldier relayed a digital message directly to Igov, marking the approaching transports distance and time until it reached the strike zone. Energy readings are too high for scanners to properly analyze, and on unusual wavelengths. This indicates this is the target tra- Shwang!  
The cyborg's head pitched to the side as a large, armor-piercing sniper bullet punched through the dermal impact armor mounted over his skull, causing his body to follow the projectile's momentum and roll over to his comrades in the grass behind him.  
Emergency! Emergency! Our position has been marked! We are under fire! One of the remaining cyborgs transmitted, switching his vision modes to see through the foliage. Core infantry is en route. Heavy weapons are making adjustments. Orders?  
This is General Yutchzky, the transmission seemed to boom wondrously in the cybernetic man's head, and for a moment he felt a grand sense of purpose and spirit overwhelm the cold electronics that kept most of his brain functioning. Squad one, mark the transport for heavy weapons targeting. Squad two, engage the enemy, then withdraw to marker four.

As one, the bio-mechanical shock troopers rose to a crouch, their weapons trained and ready as the Core troopers began shouting and training their own weapons.  
Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta!  
Br-raap! Br-raap! Br-raap! Br-raap!  
Core autorifle rounds streaked past heavy carbine bolts as both sides opened fire, strafing the other side's front lines of infantry.  
Though the bolt carbines used by Igov's cyborgs were stronger weapons, and the cyborgs' targeting more accurate, the cybernetically revived soldiers began falling much sooner than Core's men did, as the superior armor provided by the Mk. II Storm Suit and the higher rate of fire from the autorifles quickly began to dominate the small skirmish.

Target has been marked. Coordinates received. Withdraw has been authorized. Fall-back procedures initi- Whnnnng!  
That particular cyborg stopped speaking as a railgun round pounded through his chest, spraying bits of bone and metal out of his back. Very quickly the wound began to glow a bright red, burning and expanding rapidly from the heat of the projectile's passing alone.  
From the mouth of the mighty weapon, extending through the fallen trooper and far onward, an orange streak of intense heat lit up the air from the railgun's attack, creating the appearance of a solid yellow-ish beam bursting through the cybernetic puppet.  
The other cyborgs took notice of this effect only to mark a higher priority target for elimination, their minds no longer able to comprehend the fear associated with such savage power being arrayed against them. Still crouching, and trading fire the whole way, the cybernetically enhanced soldiers slowly moved away from the quickly approaching train, unflinching as more and more of their number fell to the enemy's guns.

Igov looked over the Black Sabre artillery boomers that stomped past him, their four legs moving in careful, tedious tandem to keep their massive guns balanced.  
'And so the game begins,' he thought to himself, wondering about the lack of any appearance by the DAPC so far. While the General could certainly appreciate the idea that no rational commander would want to have to rely on the fools normally, the fact that they had waded into combat against the forces at his command again and again and always emerged mostly unscathed should have told even the most stubborn idiot that there were no better soldiers to throw at Igov's resurrected cybernetic army. And while he was dreading the appearance of the "Angel Butchers," he had also adjusted his strategy specifically so that he could succeed in his mission despite their interference. And if there was one thing that grated on the Russian's nerves, it was wasted tactics.  
Raising his arm and then dropping it, he commanded the combat robots on either side of him. "Unit 1, fire on marked target Alpha 2, 4, 7. Unit 2, fire on marker 3."  
Whaboom-Whaboom-Whaboom-Whaboom! The thunderous symphony of two sets of quad cannons firing in rapid succession shook the ground as the two four-legged mecha trembled, their chassis straining to maintain the force pounding down atop them. Immediately afterward their back launchers were raised toward the sky, and a softer, more pleasing hiss filled the air as each weapons platform released a volley of ballistic rockets into the fray to mount the havoc caused by the artillery cannons.  
Utilizing a wireless link to one of his sergeants, Igov was pleased as his cybernetic eye displayed the image of the advance Core unit being pulverized by the second heavy barrage, their armor doing nothing but creating more pieces to be scattered as they were torn apart.  
The transport fared much better, as it was heavily armored, and the laser markers pinning its position had made adjustments so that the majority of the damage would hit the lower section of the train and immobilize it rather than pierce the hull and damage the train's precious contents. Rended metal burst out the bottom of the cargo car, and it trembled from side to side as its sub-structure buckled, landing the car on its underside and creating a whole mess of friction for the engine to try and compensate for.

On the opposite end of the battlefield, Captain Himadi lowered his macrobinoculars as the explosions tore his front line apart, and grated his teeth.  
"Lieutenant! Analyze the angle of attack and get me a bead on that artillery! Heavy weapons, give our second line some room to advance!"  
Outside the large, evacuated train station that housed the Captain and his retinue, the fighting slowed as Core soldiers moved to take cover, shaken by the sight of seeing their front lines smashed in a moment, while the cyborgs continued to spread out and gain distance, which thinned their own fire.  
"What the hell are they doing!" Himadi groused, watching the fighting die down. "Do they mean to capture the train or destroy it? Why are they retreating so quickly?"  
His first lieutenant shook his head. "Considering the... relative care with which they used their artillery barrage, they MUST be intending to capture the transport. Perhaps they were hoping to draw our troops into an ambush?"  
Himadi shook his head. "When their objective is to capture the transport? It can't be that Russian rust-bucket commanding those freaks; he's usually better than this."  
"Sir? Perhaps we should secure the transport?"  
The Captain snorted. "I'm supposed to waste troops trying to guard something in the middle of the bloody battlefield? Call in the patrols around the area to reinforce and tighten our position! Be on guard from an attack from the rear and to our heavy weapons! Drive these freaks back and secure the area!"  
"Sir!" A communications technician rushed through the doorway as the other armor-clad figures moved to obey their orders.  
The Captain frowned at the man, who provided a stark contrast to the hefty suits of armor wearing his tiny flak vest and maskless helmet, and thus immediately gave the impression of a startled kitten weaving his way among lions.  
"Sir, Unit 7 was assaulted while securing the front lobby! We're unable to re-establish contact!"  
Himadi frowned. "Assaulted? By what?"  
"I don't know, sir!" the technician said nervously. "The attack came by surprise, apparently! We were only able to make out a few shouts and some scattered gunfire before we lost contact!"  
The Core Captain turned away, his mind awhirl as the battle outside escalated. The cyborgs that his troops were even now cutting apart outside were barely capable of covert actions; their very nature was to walk right into the thick of the conflict and slug it out face-to-face with their opponents, relying upon their weaponry and armor to protect them. In this manner they were similar in strategic value to Core standard infantry, though not as reliable, and more difficult to produce, as they were cybernetically revived cadavers taken from the ranks of terrorist and Russian soldiers that had fallen.  
Thus, it was very unlikely that the station had been infiltrated by a group of cyborgs. Hamadi knew that the Freedom's Angels had many other weapons at their disposal, but not many of them were capable of breaking into and assaulting a heavily fortified Core presence. Unless their foes had a new weapon to use, this smacked of a distraction to lure guns away from the objective, which again seemed out of character for the General that Captain Hamadi assumed he was facing.

Perhaps it was a hunch, or perhaps some manner of a soldier's sixth sense, but the Core Captain looked up toward the scaffolding in the main lobby of the train station, and immediately spied a long mess of black hair hanging down from a larger mass that clung to the top of the scaffolding.  
Without a word, and to the great alarm of everyone in the station, Himadi raised his autorifle up to the ceiling and opened fire. Shattered glass and bits of metal and plastic showered the troopers below as the large bullets sundered the scaffolding easily, and half of the confused and startled soldiers dove for cover and started searching for the enemy, while the other half actually trained their weapons on the Captain, fearing he had gone rogue.  
That conclusion was quickly discarded as a lithe, robotic body fell onto the floor amongst the shattered glass and metal, its torso ripped open by autorifle rounds such that a multitude of torn wires and metal scraps curled outward in a grim, mechanical imitation of a human wound.  
The Core infantryman standing directly next to the robotic corpse gulped. The tight, curvaceous body wrapped in a black spandex bodysuit would have sent him into a lustful stupor on his off-hours, but on the battlefield, the mechanical simulation of human beauty filled him with dread.  
"Mark III androids! Check the entrances! Don't spread out!" The Lieutenant shouted, recognizing the signature metal sensor "ears" and waving his hands about as he directed the guards in the main lobby to form the best defensive perimeter they could.  
The Captain frowned, a fact that was very noticeable to his men since he wasn't wearing his helmet and mask. "Androids. Nothing new. Definitely a diversion." While the Mk. III models were more than a match for Core soldiers one-on-one, their strength was performing covert assaults, which would be very difficult with how well that Core had fortified the station.  
Nonetheless, it was a distraction that Himadi could not ignore, as the robotic killers were more than a justifiable threat to his men and his position. Even allowing for this, however, the ultimate goal of the terrorist forces remained unclear; they couldn't expect this to pin them down long enough for a truck or helicopter transport to make off with the cargo, so what good would it do?

A clanking noise, which managed to pierce Himadi's thoughtful musing where the rampant shouting around him failed, came from above him. With a growl, the Captain raised his autorifle toward the air ducts and opened fire.  
Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta! Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta!  
This time, the multitude of infantry joined their captain's attack, and the large aluminum corridors were torn apart from gunfire as damaged, spasming female bodies tumbled out of the ducts and onto the floor.  
Four of the androids had hit the ground in pieces before a fifth jumped out the ducts ahead of the gunfire, tucking into a tight somersault as it selected its target in mid-air.  
Shwink! As the android reached the floor, it swung its arm in a wicked arc straight for a Core trooper's neck, activating a long, thin, mono-molecular blade that burst out of the android's wrist and easily punctured the thin layers of protection afforded to that tiny but vital area of the soldier's body.  
Before the robotic assassin had even pulled its blade out of its first victim's throat, it leveled its other arm at a small cluster of troops, small but deadly mini-rockets emerging from its forearm in preparation to fire.  
Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta! Chank! Bwam! The android never got the chance, as the well-prepared and positioned soldiers split its torso asunder with a carefully aimed stitch of gunfire, their training and skill such that not a single bullet had even struck the trooper's corpse that the robot was still attached to.  
Two more androids suddenly burst from the ducts, these ones dropping solidly on the ground rather than leaping to melee range.  
The Captain blinked, surprised, as the two Mk. II androids raised their arms mechanically, bringing their twin sub-machine guns to bear against the Core infantry arrayed against them. Within seconds the androids were falling to pieces on the ground, the autorifle rounds punching right through their thin, armor-like "skin," while their own bursts of fire proved far too weak to even bother the heavily armored troopers.  
'Yeah, definitely a distraction,' Himadi decided, keeping his own autorifle trained on the remains of the air ducts, ready to annihilate any more of the highly sophisticated cannon fodder that dared appear.

As it turned out, the next threat didn't burst from the ducts like before, but instead came from the door, which was kicked off its hinges and sent flying across the room.  
The Core troopers leveled their weapons, and the vast majority of them cursed into their breather masks as they recognized the technician being held in a tight grip around the neck by the advancing Mk. III android.  
"No! D-Don't shoot! Please!" The man begged, knowing that if the android made to attack the soldiers in the room, they were authorized to return fire through him if they needed to.  
The soldiers went into action via normal procedures, and the android brought its wrist-mounted blade closer to its hostage's neck as several laser sights started waving around it and its shield, attempting to find a clean line of attack.  
The android raised its free arm above the technician's shoulder, and Captain Himadi muttered a vile curse as he prepared to give the order to fire, seeing the mini-rockets emerge.  
Krnch! The android blinked, which was an odd quirk of its programming to act vaguely human-like, as an arm grabbed its own from behind and crushed it in its grip, grinding together the servos and wires necessary to complete the activation of its weapons.  
KRNNK! It then winced, another oddity, as its other arm was grabbed at the bicep, before both limbs were torn straight off of its body.  
As the shaken technician fell to the floor and scrambled away, the armless android calmly turned around, its programming dictating that if it had any hope of defeating the enemy behind it, which it probably didn't, it would be at its best after scanning the foe.  
The last thing the android's memory banks ever recorded was the image of a man's face framed by long, blond hair, along with the image of the man's fist, which grew larger and larger in the robot's field of vision until the point of final deactivation.

The Core soldiers remained absolutely still as the shattered remains of the android flew across the room, not taking their eyes off the muscular blond man standing in the doorway wearing blue combat armor.  
"Is that... is the DAPC here?" One soldier asked, utterly bewildered. With the department's reputation, the appearance of one of their officers always led to mixed feelings, similar to when a giant monster attacked Tokyo and Godzilla emerged to fight it; sure, ultimately you were glad Godzilla had arrived, but you sure didn't want to be within a five-mile radius of the battle.  
"Uh... Captain? Should we open fire, or what?" The Lieutenant asked, significantly unnerved by watching someone who, for all he knew, was a normal human tear a robot limb from limb with his bare hands.  
Kyle sweatdropped, and waved to the soldiers. "Hi guys! I'm here to back you up!"  
Captain Himadi's face remained expressionless as he stared at the new arrival.  
"Uh... sir?"  
"I'm thinking!" The Core Captain snapped, causing his lieutenant to flinch. Finally, he settled on growling at the blond man. "Just what the HELL do you think you're doing here!"  
Kyle frowned, planting his fists on his hips. "I'm backing you up. Duh, isn't that what I just said?"  
"I did NOT request back-up! Especially not from you idiots!" Himadi shouted, causing many of his soldiers to stare at him questioningly. Didn't the officer just save a Core technician's life?  
Kyle smiled. "I know! But here we are, ready to help! Pretty generous, huh? No, you don't have to thank us," the Lieutenant Commander rambled on, walking proudly through the middle of the train station as bits of broken metal and plastic broke under his boots.  
Himadi seethed, his rage building at seeing someone stroll so casually through a zone that he had held firmly with solid formations and saturation of firepower. "I... see. And where is everyone else, then?"  
The blond officer chuckled in embarrassment. "Well, it's like this. Something else came up, so most of our guys are busy fighting some kind of monster in the streets." Many of the Core soldiers sweatdropped. "But don't worry! We have three of our toughest guys here, including me!"  
"Three men for backup?" The Lieutenant asked doubtfully.  
One of the soldiers behind him shrugged. "Well, it's better than nothing... I guess... maybe..."  
Captain Himadi twitched. "I have a bad feeling about this..."

Whaboom-Whaboom-Whaboom-Whaboom! The quick succession of cannon fire rang through the air once again, and the shells from the Black Sabre boomers arced high into the air, this time raining on the station itself to attempt to take out its heavy weapons.  
Igov snorted as his visual uplink to one of the front-line cyborgs showed him the results of the bombardment. It seemed that Core had chosen the station well; the large, triangular steel roof that covered the main building as well as the train loading terminal, and gave it a neat space-agey look, was apparently also reinforced, and the Russian general was extremely displeased to see little more damage done than the creation of large, soot-covered dents smashed into the roof.  
'The normal explosive shells cannot pierce the roof. Very well.' He briefly considered trying a rocket barrage, but discarded the idea just as quickly, as the missiles didn't carry a powerful enough charge to damage the structure extensively even if they did break through.  
The cyborg General quickly began to regret leaving the Devastator-class boomers behind, as their shoulder cannons would have provided the combination of armor penetration and power needed to cause extensive damage to the station and significantly limit Core's resistance.  
Igov sighed. That was not the objective. He had left the attack boomers behind because they were expensive units that could not be flippantly sacrificed, and because they weren't essential to the operation.  
The Russian General hated the idea of fighting a battle for the purpose of stealing an objective and taking flight, but he had little choice; he wasn't about to try and tangle with Core and the DAPC at the same time. The Central Organized Response Echelon sported large squads of disciplined, well-equipped soldiers, while the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment possessed superhuman crazy people with loads of experience fighting him. Taking on either force was a dangerous proposition that was likely to end in failure. Taking on both was simple suicide, and as it was Igov was desperately hoping that the two forces rallying against him would spend enough time getting in each other's way and struggling with each other that he would be able to take flight.

"Unit 1, adjust firing angle by 3.7 degrees and prepare to-"  
Whang! Whang! Whoom! Igov's commands were cut off as several large armor-piercing rounds stabbed into the back of the Black Sabre boomer he was speaking to, and the Russian only had a moment to dive to the side as its ammo bays detonated, sending large chunks of metal and debris flying in a wide shower.  
Sighing at the injustice of it all, Igov turned to the very expected sight of Snake standing on top of the eighteen-wheeler they had used to transport the cyborg squads, taking aim at the General with his light autocannon at the ready.  
"Hey, tinhead! Not much of an army you got here!" The Lieutenant mocked, jumping onto the cab of the truck and pulling a detonator out of his pocket. "I mean, you've got two artillery bots, somewhere around thirty borgs... that's it? What happened to 'Mr. Red Death, commander of the unstoppable steel hordes?'" Grinning, he pressed the button on the detonator, reveling in the sound of the explosion as the truck behind him burst into a flaming maelstrom, sending debris scything out in all directions and burning tires bouncing down the street.  
Igov twitched, but said nothing as the second Black Sabre boomer slowly turned around, its quad legs pounding the ground in furious tandem as it struggled to bring its limited anti-personnel armaments to bear.  
Shrnnk! The boomer's motion stopped, and its entire chassis began to shake as its head was wrenched off its torso.  
Getting up off the ground, Igov sullenly prepared a haughty, melodramatic speech to inform the two police officers that they hadn't won, and that he would be back, when he noticed that Ranma Saotome, who was still gripping the decapitated head of the Black Sabre, was seething with abject rage. The Russian General found this quite curious, as he had not committed any significant atrocity yet in this engagement, and the DAPC officers had always struck him as too whimsical and pinheaded to maintain grudges over past offenses.  
"You stupid, ugly, poorly-dressed son of a Cuisinart!" Ranma shouted, crushing the boomer's head between his hands.  
Igov blinked, and then raised an eyebrow questioningly, pointing at himself.  
"That's right, YOU!" The pigtailed man screamed, idly firing a blast of red, angry ki down into the boomer's neck and pulverizing its internals. "It just had to be you, didn't it! You just cost me 2,000 yen, jackass! I'm going to rip you apart and pay by selling your limbs as scrap metal!"  
A very large sweatdrop rolled down Igov's head, and Snake chuckled as he finally aimed at the cyborg General with his autocannon.  
"Ha! Sorry about that. Saotome hasn't been in the best financial shape recently." Then he grinned and switched on the laser sight to his weapon. "So, you gonna whip out the guns, or what? It's no fun if you just stand there!"  
Igov cleared his throat, and then stepped back with one leg while pointing his arm at Snake. "You may have won..." Then he stopped, and lowered his arm. "To hell with this. Goodbye." Irritated to the point that he couldn't even act the part of a proper villain, the cyborg straightened, and held his arms down at his sides as a blue energy field with webs of white shifting through it swiftly enveloped his body.  
Shooooft! Ranma and Snake jumped back, startled, as their opponent teleported away to safety, disappearing in a haze of light blue and electric arcs as his body tore through the barriers of time and space.

"What the heck! Since when did they make chronospheres in those sizes!" Ranma groused. At least he assumed Igov had used a personal chronosphere device, as they had completely destroyed the full-function chronosphere the FA's had built, and it was assumed that the terrorist forces didn't have the resources or power to construct and activate more of the hefty teleportation devices.  
"Dang. That was pretty cool," Snake admitted, lowering his autocannon and checking the surrounding area to see if perhaps the cyborg had merely teleported to a better firing position. "Doesn't look like he's here now, though. I guess that means we win."  
Ranma frowned doubtfully. "Is it just me, or was that WAY too easy?"  
Snake rolled his eyes. "Well, the main bad guy just ran away, we destroyed his heavy support, all that remains of the enemy forces are a few rank-and-file bits of cannon fodder that those Core dweebs are mopping up easily, and the objective lies on the train tracks, immobile and safe. What could possibly go wrong now?"

Kyle looked up at the immobilized cargo train as he helped the last of the conductors and engineers away from the battlefield, idly wondering what was inside that was the cause of the surrounding carnage.  
Beyond the contested transport, the explosions of rocket volleys roared as Core's heavy weapon batteries smashed the remains of the enemies, reducing the formerly strong lines of the cyborg ranks to isolated pockets of soldiers being easily destroyed by the final advance of Core's infantry.  
Kyle shrugged as he looked around the train to the battlefield; usually when Core fought a battle of the Angels' choosing, they would be over-powered or outmaneuvered. In such cases, those in positions of power were quick to suggest calling in backup from the DAPC, as the anti-anomaly specialists rarely had anything better to do, and were likely on their way to the biggest firefight in the city anyway. Core had always, on every single occasion, rejected the help, either out of pride or for fear that they would be destroyed along with the DAPC's enemies.  
This time, however, it had appeared that the Echelon was doing just fine, and Kyle found himself wondering apprehensively if Asuka and the others were going to be okay fighting the youma without their three best fighters on the scene.  
'Well, I guess we can get there quickly enough to back them up... after all, Core is swarming the area now and we've pretty much finished he-' Kyle suddenly jerked his head around as he heard a sharp snapping noise coming from atop the train car.  
Two Core soldiers looked surprised as the DAPC officer whirled and looked up at the immobilized car. "Something wrong? We have to secure the cargo and relocate it into the station. Can you-" The man stopped speaking as Kyle suddenly held a hand up, still not facing the two troopers.  
Kyle's suspicion grew as his enhanced hearing picked up a low-pitched whine, like the sound that he commonly associated with robots being powered up from standby.  
Leaving the two officers below stunned and confused, the blond officer leapt up to the top of the car to investigate.  
The car roof shook upon his landing due to the damage to its sub-structure, and Kyle grimaced as he almost fell backward, which would have made him an easy target for the Mk. III combat android arming some sort of device atop the train.  
The android was lying almost flat atop the roof of the train car, and its sensor ears twitched as they picked up Kyle's less-than-subtle presence.  
Quickly moving to activate a switch on the device, the android rolled toward Kyle and then bounced into a slashing leap, striking with its wrist blades in a tight, graceful arc.  
Kyle's reflexes were even more impressive, as he suddenly let himself fall back toward the edge of the car slightly, while lashing out and grabbing the android's arm. Then he swung the assassin droid around hard and threw it in the direction he had been leaning, increasing its momentum tenfold, and managing to swing himself back onto the train car.  
CRASH! Ignoring the sound of shattering concrete and glass from the android's impact with the train station, Kyle walked up to the machine mounted atop the train and tried to discern what it could be. It was shaped like a cylinder cut lengthwise down the middle, with several wires strung over the top. On one end was a display and switch panel, no doubt for using the device, and on the other side was a pit which housed a glowing blue sphere that appeared to be in rapid motion.  
Were it anyone but the good Lieutenant Tekai who had discovered the device, it likely would not have succeeded in activating, as anyone else might have destroyed, disabled, or tinkered with the machine until its carefully aligned parameters could no longer perform the task it was designed for.  
Alas, Kyle immediately decided that the device was some sort of bomb, which didn't seem horribly unreasonable if one didn't consider that Igov had been trying to take the train's cargo intact.  
"Hey, you guys!" The blond officer shouted down to the two Core troopers. "Get a bomb squad guy up here!"  
The soldiers, who had pretty much been on edge after seeing an android go flying from the train and embed itself in a concrete wall, stared at the police officer, unsure whether they should argue.  
"A bomb? Are you certain?" One of them asked as the other one activated his radio, making the appropriate call.  
"Pretty sure," Kyle answered. "I mean, it's one hell of a funky-looking space bomb, or something, but I have a feeling that bad things are going to happen when this thing goes off!"  
Then the low-pitched whine increased in sonic intensity, and a glowing white aura of fluctuating energy wrapped around the train car, filling with blue in a bright, enigmatic wash of power as the chronosphere transmitter teleported the entire train car away to some obscure location.  
Thud! The DAPC Lieutenant fell flat on his face, shocked as he was from having his perch torn from reality that not even his enhanced reflexes and combat training could compensate for the mental malfunction.  
While lying prone on the train tracks, Kyle reflected upon how his sentence had actually been half-right, and decided that this was actually an improvement in respect to his usual luck with identifying battlefield hazards.  
Looking up, he made note of the two Core soldiers from before. While he couldn't see their gaping mouths or shocked expressions behind the goggles and armor mask of the Storm Suit, Kyle could easily guess at the men's surprise judging from the way they had both dropped their guns, and their hands were twitching.  
"Yeah, so... I guess you can go ahead and call off the bomb squad..." He said somewhat apologetically, embarrassed at having essentially blown the mission by himself. 'Hope there wasn't anything important in there.'

In a temple on Pluto, far in the outer reaches of Earth's solar system, a tall, green-haired woman wearing the silliest dark purple mini-skirt imaginable winced as a sudden, jarring bolt of pain lanced through her skull; the second time in the past ten minutes.  
Gritting her teeth, Setsuna, the Senshi of Pluto and guardian of time, got up and turned toward the time gates to search for anomalies that had caused the jolt.  
This was not the first time she had felt such sudden and short-lived twinges of agony, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out what they were. They were not a normal occurrence; the first time she ever felt them was less than a year ago, and they had happened sporadically for about a week before stopping altogether, until recently. After the incident she had checked the Gates of Time extensively, since the feelings bombarding her senses seemed to be very similar to those inflicted by time-space anomalies, most commonly being unauthorized time travel and dimensional tears.  
The problem was, she couldn't pinpoint these disturbances, as the energy spike happened too quickly, and faded all but instantly; she could guess they were happening at the exact time she felt the stabbing pain in her cranium, but the Earth was a vast place, and now that the lives of the Senshi were in full swing, she couldn't afford to spend a couple hundred years scanning the entire planet for anything that looks like it may have to do with the anomaly.  
The results of the disturbances were no less annoying, but hardly catastrophic; merely small rips and tears in the time-stream that loosened the entire matrix of energies, like a garment being nibbled at by moths. The difference being, of course, that too big a hole could create major warp-space anomalies such as time rifts and spacial voids. The minor holes were easy to fix, but Sailor Pluto found it unnerving that something was gnawing away at the time-stream and she couldn't find the cause.  
It was most unfortunate that the Senshi of Pluto didn't consider the daily newspaper or military archives to be useful sources of information, or else she may have seen the several reports of military units being teleported around Tokyo, or even seen the report specifically detailing the chronosphere and its abilities. But alas, such feeble and easily manipulated sources of information were beneath her notice as she used her mighty clairvoyance in a desperate search for anything that was amiss.  
She had just gotten past a quick scan of Roswell, New Mexico, to see if the alien technologies stored there were causing problems again, when she noticed something odd happening in a small desert town to the east, and she stopped curiously to watch.  
A young man had finished smoking a cigarette, and flicked it over his shoulder in the general direction of a garbage can. Oddly enough, a wind that didn't seem to be there a moment ago carried the glowing ember much farther than it should have gone, across the length of a building and toward a gas station beyond, where a different man had very inconveniently spilled a puddle of fuel on the ground...  
Pluto winced, but moved on quickly, convinced that the odd happenstance had nothing to do with the problem she sought. Such things were unfortunate, but happened regularly as tiny, inexplicable occurrences laughed in the face of chance and cast hundreds of people to the broiling ocean of fate. They were not her concern.  
Sighing deeply, the guardian of time decided to do a quick check on the Senshi, on the off chance that they had something to do with the disturbance. It was unlikely, as in every other case of the anomaly the Senshi were fine, but strange phenomena did tend to occur around them, and it was a reasonable guess.  
The Gates of Time shifted to show Pluto what she wished to view, and she blinked.  
"... Oh... my... God..."

"Halt! The supermarket is a peaceful place for mothers and girlfriends to get delicious ingredients to make wonderful meals for their loved ones! To destroy and defile this place as you have done is an insult to all who love food! In the name of the moon, I will punish you!" Sailor Moon shouted, posing as she pointed toward the startled youma down below.  
"In the name of Mars!" Shouted the red-skirted sailor of Mars, pointing along with Moon.  
"In the name of Mercury!"  
"In the name of Jupiter!"  
"..."  
The others remained frozen while they pointed, and then, as one, glanced over at Sailor Venus to see what was taking her so long.  
They all sweatdropped as they saw that instead of posing and shouting with the rest of them, the Senshi of love was simply standing with a sign held high above her head which said Business a little slow? Your ad shouted here! Call 555-8217 today!  
The youma, which appeared to be a forklift with metal claws for arms, looked singularly unimpressed by the performance, though it did attempt to make its escape by flinging a crate of vegetables at the sailor-suited heroines.  
Turning around, the creature immediately rolled off in the direction it had come from, hoping the fallen bodies of the people it had already drained would provide some deterrent to the Senshi launching their magic attacks.  
Mars growled as she leapt out of the way of the thrown crate, and reached one arm back as she took careful aim at the monster. "_Mars flame sniper_!"  
Jupiter took less careful aim as she hit the ground, and shouted her own attack. "_Sparkling wide pressure_!"  
"GWAAH!" The youma pitched forward as the flame arrow tagged it on the shoulder, and fell into a skid as its wheels lost control on the pavement, running it painfully into a car parked on the side of the road. The other attack subsequently missed as a result of the skid, and Jupiter's ball of lighting smashed into a storefront, shattering the glass windows and setting small fires about the place.

Sailor Moon blinked as she watched the youma struggle, and scratched her head. "Wow. This doesn't look like it's going to be any trouble at all. And here I thought it would be hard after so long."  
Ami nodded as she scanned the monster with her visor. "This is one of the older youma, possibly belonging to Nephrite or Jadeite. Not only is it weak, but it also has very low energy levels. I'm guessing it was trying to hide and went on a rampage when it got too hungry for it to stand."  
The youma winced, overhearing the Senshi of Mercury's perfectly accurate hypothesis. "Weak, am I? I'll show you weak! _Super salad shooter_!" Thrusting one arm into an adjacent vegetable booth, the youma aimed its other arm at the Senshi, which morphed into a cannon. It then fired off an iceberg lettuce cannonball, the projectile emerging from the barrel in a spray of water and green, leafy shards of cabbage.  
Sailor Jupiter didn't even blink as the ball of lettuce struck her in the abdomen, bursting and splashing wet greenery all over her chest and skirt. "Boy, when you say you're going to show us weak, you don't mess around, do you?"  
"Blast it now, Sailor Moon!" Venus shouted dramatically, afraid that if she made an actual contribution to the battle she would destroy their foe entirely, and steal their princess' thunder.  
Sailor Moon frowned, and began making the proper motions with her arms, when she suddenly stopped. "I can't!"  
"Why not! You DO remember how, don't you!" Mars asked angrily. Considering that none of them had known their attacks before their transformations imparted the knowledge, she didn't know how it was possible to forget them.  
"That's not it!" Moon insisted, bunching her hands up under her chest. "It's just... I feel so sorry for it!"  
Crash! Everyone in the vicinity, including the youma, facefaulted mightily.  
"You feel SORRY for it!" Sailor Jupiter shouted in disbelief.  
"It's next to harmless! I feel like I'm blasting a naughty puppy!" Moon insisted. Then she stopped to think. "A really ugly puppy, anyway."  
The youma, rather than using the time to escape, seethed in rage as it bounced to its feet-like wheels, demonstrating the most likely reason why its species was just about extinct. "How dare you! I'll crush you like a... like a... what's that noise?" The youma scratched its head as a loud, unfamiliar ringing noise approached rapidly.  
The Senshi blinked, and then each of them turned, surprised, as they recognized the sound of police sirens approaching from the street they had come from.  
"The police? What're they doing here?" Sailor Venus asked, completely baffled.  
"Most likely checking on the youma attack," Mercury reasoned.  
"What? Since when do they do stuff like that?" Venus wondered, scratching the back of her head as the car turned a corner and came into view.  
The youma frowned, then cleared its throat. "Uh, excuse me? Can we continue our fi-"  
"Shush!" Sailor Mars interrupted harshly, causing the forklift monster to wince. "Not now! We need to find out what the cops want!"

Before long two patrol cars had rolled up to the edge of the market, and three officers emerged, immediately crouching down behind the food crates and aiming their guns in the direction of the skirmish.  
"All right, everybody down! Get your hands on your head, NOW!" Asuka shouted, taking aim at the youma standing past the Senshi with her handgun.  
The Senshi all stared at the police officers stupidly.  
"I am Captain Takami of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment! Put your hands on your head!" She shouted again, quickly losing her patience.  
Sailor Mercury gasped in surprise while the other Senshi looked at each other.  
"You mean... us too?" Sailor Moon asked in confusion, pointing to herself.  
"YES, GODDAMN IT!" The police Captain shouted angrily, causing the sailor-suited women to flinch. "HANDS! HEAD! NOW!"  
"But... But... W-We're the good gu-" Sailor Moon began to make a case for the Senshi's presence when Asuka unloaded a warning round that zipped but a few feet from her ear.  
Sailor Moon may have been considered the mightiest superheroine in Japan (in this aniverse, anyway), but like all sensible human beings, had a tendency to do what the person holding the gun at her said once it was clear that person meant business. Moon immediately dropped to the ground, holding her head and bawling while apologizing profusely.  
The other Senshi were understandably shocked by this development, and Mars, Venus, and Jupiter each considered attacking and disarming the officer that had just shot at them.  
After a moment of thought, which may or may not have involved looking at the larger machine gun that the short, brown-haired man was aiming at them, they decided that fighting the police would be an extremely poor way to restart their active status as defenders of love and justice, and each of the other Senshi reluctantly followed Sailor Moon's lead.  
"You too, freakjob! Get down!" Asuka shouted, slowly advancing in a crouch while Tiro covered her.  
The youma growled, and its mutated cab stretched upward in a haughty expression. "You dare order me around, human?" Unaware of the rumbling hum that was coming from behind him, he sneered at the DA officers. "Get out of my way, or perish!"  
Asuka lowered her weapon. "Look behind you, and then tell me that."  
The youma did so, and large beads of sweat began to appear over what served as the creatures head as it watched a massive 120 mm. cannon level off to aim directly at it.  
Standing up, the police Captain addressed the monster in a calm, professional manner, completely surprising the Sailor Senshi, who, to be fair, were already horribly confused as to what was going on.  
"You are hereby placed under arrest by the prime charter of DAPC section one. As a class four demonic presence, you are limited to the following rights: absolute silence, the violation of which may result in immediate termination."  
The youma stared blankly at the Captain, then raised one of its arms. "Uhm-"  
"Wrong answer," Asuka said immediately, raising her own hand and snapping her fingers.

It was generally believed, by those who found time to study such things, that youma were either bulletproof or completely impervious to physical damage, as all armed police engagements had ended with the cops' energy being drained, while the Senshi dispatched youma with some degree of efficiency.  
This was not true, but was a completely understandable conclusion. The truth was youma were not natural life-forms animated through the chemical processes of several organs, instead being creatures of magic that coalesced into some limited physical form, or possessed one nearby that was convenient. Their body was nothing but a vessel to hold the other-worldly energies animating it, with no organs or vital parts responsible for motion, and as such, didn't suffer any of the normal bodily failures when they had several small holes punched in them.  
In practical terms, this meant that youma were extremely resistant to physical harm, but their bodies faced the same physical limitations as all other solid matter when being pulverized by a thirty-pound tank shell.  
KWA-BOOM!  
Sailor Moon whimpered as she felt the shock wave from the detonation bathe her back in a wave of heat, and shook slightly as youma dust fell all around her like snow, being blasted into the air rather than neatly falling into a pile as it did as a result of the Senshi's attacks.  
"Okay red skirt, on your feet!" Asuka said, roughly grabbing Mars' arm and hoisting her up before tying a pair of plastic wrist bindings onto her.  
"What's this about? Why are we being arrested?" Moon cried, as two more officers emerged from the tank to help.  
"The government of Japan does not recognize the actions of unregistered vigilantes like yourselves as a valid contribution to protecting the peace, and as such, you will be held fully responsible for endangering the lives of civilians and their property!" Asuka said, tightening the wrist bindings around an increasingly irritated Sailor Mars.  
"Uh... does that mean there are registered vigilantes?" Mercury asked cautiously, being given much more sensitive treatment as she was handcuffed by Sakura.  
"Yes, there are," Asuka said matter-of-factly, "and we're more than willing to cut such people some slack."  
"This is ridiculous! We've saved the world before!" Jupiter shouted as Tycho struggled with her. "Besides, what're you talking about 'endangering civilians and their property'!"  
Asuka stopped tugging Mars over to her car, and pointed toward the storefront that had been damaged by Jupiter's attack. "I think that proves my point right there?"  
"Oh, give me a break!" Mars shouted angrily. "You don't think we read the newspaper! I've seen the kind of damage the DAPC does on a weekly basis! What do you take us for!"  
The other Senshi looked up in surprise, since, in fact, Mars was the only one among them who read the daily newspaper with any degree of consistency. Even Ami shunned the daily news for magazines and web sites specific to her topics of interest, and thus had never heard of the DAPC before.  
Asuka gave Mars a good shake to get her to pipe down, and then swung open the door to her car. "The DIFFERENCE, miss half-naked super heroine, is establishment of responsibility! Everyone knows who and where we are, or can find out, and we spend all day dealing with complaints about stuff we've destroyed! Now stop your whining!" With that, she shoved the Senshi of Mars into the back of her car, with Mercury being more gently helped into the opposite side.

Tiro chuckled as he bound Venus' wrists behind her, trying very hard to be professional and not touch anything he wasn't supposed to. "So, I mean... I-I really have to say, this is just... an HONOR for me. I mean... who would've thought that one day **I** would get to arrest **the** Sailor Venus! I'm a really big fan, but, well, who isn't, you know?"  
"That's... uh... that's great," Venus said, sweatdropping.  
"I swear, this is my greatest dream come true!" Tiro stopped tightening the bonds momentarily. "Well, the beginning of the dream, anyway. Except the handcuffs were all fuzzy then." Ignoring the grimace from the young woman he was binding, Tiro stood up and took her by the arm. "There! All done!" He looked around, then grasped his head. "I-I'm sorry, but, I HAVE to get a photo taken of this! Junko, can you help me out?"  
"Yeah, sure!" The redhead let go of Sailor Moon, and then removed a small camera from her pocket. "Captain, can you take care of ponytails here? Thanks."  
Tiro stood proudly behind the humiliated Venus as Junko got into position in front of them.  
"All right, everybody smile!"  
"Actually, I think it would be better if she kept looking miserable," Tiro reasoned seriously, "I want the picture to look as real as possible, so that the fan club doesn't think I doctored the photo."  
Junko raised an eyebrow. "Well, whatever you say."  
"Geez, you know, I hate to be a bother," the lecher said nervously to his captive, "but would you mind if I did the whole 'bad cop' thing and slammed you down over the hood of my car? Just for dramatic effect?"  
"Fine. Just watch the face," the Senshi of Love mumbled irritably.  
Wham! "Ouch!" Click!

"But don't you see? If we hadn't arrived, then innocent people might have been hurt!" Sailor Moon whined as Asuka shoved her in the second car next to Jupiter.  
The police Captain sighed. "I assure you, the purity of your intentions WILL be taken into account when determining your punishment. Now stop complaining and get in the car!"  
"Ow! No kicking!"  
Sighing as she slammed the car door behind the whiny moon princess, Asuka scrubbed her head with her hand, shaking out some of the water that had collected there from the rain, which had lessened only slightly since they departed the cafe.  
On the one hand, she had completed the arrests and finished her mission here, and the only damage the DAPC had caused was the large scorch mark where the youma used to be. On the other hand, no matter how firm she was in her resolve, she wasn't feeling very good about arresting the famed Sailor Senshi, who had probably saved more lives in the long run than the DAPC ever would.  
'It's never easy, is it?' Asuka thought as she got in her own car, momentarily glancing at the seething Sailor Mars and the perfectly quiet Sailor Mercury sitting in the back with their wrists bound.  
One other thing bothered her about the incident; the blue-skirted Senshi of Mercury seemed surprised when she heard her name, and hadn't offered any resistance or really said anything since the whole fiasco began. What's more, she could have sworn she'd met the young woman somewhere before...

Yoshi watched in fascination as the video feed showing the arrest of the Sailor Senshi ended.  
"Hmm... not bad at all. Unit Shin-Alpha, terminate feed and return to base for processing and reassignment."  
A beeping noise from the monitor informed the geneticist that his order had been received, and the display subsequently went black as the command was carried out.  
"Watching the Senshi now, are we? Funny, you never struck me as a fan."  
The short, bespectacled man ignored his lab assistant, and swiveled his office chair around to look at the scattered array of devices strewn about on the large table.  
Nonplussed at being disregarded as usual, the tall, lithe woman who served as Yoshi's assistant, and frequently struggled to try and obtain the rank of partner, crossed her arms over her chest in annoyance.

Doctor Yamiko Nova had originally joined the Freedom's Angels after their incredibly advanced technologies had seduced her scientific interest, finally breaking down the already negligible moral reservations the bio-geneticist had to the point where she would go to any lengths to perform new and exotic experiments with mutation and genetic manipulation. She was an attractive woman, tall and thin with long, naturally white hair that reminded most of pure snow, but was frequently overshadowed by her and Yoshi's mutual commander Alexandra Tokima, as the terrorist General's voluptuous curves and bountiful chest tended to remind the Doctor of her own imperfections. Taking solace in her intellectual superiority wasn't simple either, as every attempt she made to surpass her superior, Yoshi Konta, in his work was neatly brushed aside with the same condescending attitude given to an art student trying to surpass the works of Da Vinci in her second class.  
It was extremely frustrating for Yamiko, as she was very competitive by nature, and could find no solace in her significant achievements or rich personal life so long as Yoshi continued to generate more brilliant creations with such ease and apathy, or while Alexandra continued to drive her male colleagues numb with desire with a passing gesture.  
Yoshi, for his part, liked Yamiko very much, for the simple reason that she would drive herself insane with study and concentration to ensure she could understand his theories, and would bring herself to the brink of exhaustion to complete her work faster than the genius Professor asked for. She was very useful like that, and Yoshi didn't give a flip whether she thought she was better than him or even whether she one day bested him. And Yamiko, naturally, found that fact all the more infuriating.

"These are remarkable machines... but their energy sources are too far beyond the possibility of replication. At least, for a unit of this size," Yoshi remarked, holding open one of the alien android's chest cavities. Knowing that his assistant may well take the statement as a challenge, he added "The materials used in their generators were completely destroyed when the DAPC engaged the ship, and the materials aren't natural to Earth. If we hope to match the power output that the aliens used, it would take years of analyzing the elements and attempting to synthesize our own equivalents before we could even start testing different reactors."  
Frowning at the thought of a modular android being powered by a huge extension cord running to a full-size nuclear reactor, Yamiko sighed and moved on to more relevant issues, scanning the vast array of items sitting in front of them. "How much of this material was mounted inside the android?"  
"According to intelligence from the DA's reports, and my own investigation, all of it," Yoshi answered simply.  
Yamiko blinked. "The total volume of the materials here are at least FOUR TIMES the total space within-"  
"Yes, yes, yes, I'm well aware," Yoshi interrupted, causing his assistant to grate her teeth. "No doubt some OTHER alien technology that folds matter into layered sub-space pockets that allow for the transmission of energy without compromising structural integrity from melding solids into the same quantum location." Then he plucked a small, flat metal square trailing wires from the pile of machinery. "Specifically, it's this doohickey here."  
His assistant gaped. "What? You can't be serious! We've only had these parts for an hour!"  
Yoshi ignored her. "I'm thinking of calling it a 'chip of holding' in honor of D&D. What do you think? Do you think most people will get the reference?"  
"Th-That's ridiculous!" Yamiko said, throwing her arms up.  
"Oh-kay. No 'chip of holding'," the diminutive scientist muttered, crossing the name off a list. "What do you think of 'hammerspace capacitor'?"  
"We have more serious work to do!" Yamiko growled. "It's nice that you've managed to identify an alien device that can produce physical impossibilities in the time it's taken for me to wrap my head around what we're looking at, but there's still much to be done!"  
Yoshi sighed and nodded, much to his assistant's surprise. "You're right, of course. I just get tired so QUICKLY with the observation aspect of science. I always feel like I'm wasting my time unless I'm working to apply a technology."  
The terrorist doctor smiled softly, and was about to mutter words of empathy and understanding, when she remembered that Yoshi was a smug, self-satisfying little toad whom she hated. Her smile wilted, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "We should hurry, then. Were we able to secure any biological material from what was left of the aliens?"  
Yoshi shook his head as he began toying with another piece of alien machinery. "There was very little material left, as most of the aliens were eaten in the process of the mission by the DA's pet, while the rest of the bodies had been incinerated by Lieutenant Snake, quote, 'just in case.' If there is any spattered alien blood or skin anywhere, it's most likely on the larger machine parts that Igov took for his labs, not on our android friend here."  
"So we're looking for useful devices that can be hardwired into our existing cyborg schematics?"  
The bespectacled man shrugged. "Eh. I was just thinking I'd take a living host and simply wire it all up, and then see what does what. Maybe add a few items of my own, that sort of thing."  
Yamiko stared at her superior incredulously. "Professor, you can't be serious!"  
"I can too!" Yoshi said defensively, "I just don't feel like it!"  
"That's not... I didn't mean..." Yamiko grasped her head and massaged it for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Professor, how can you possibly expect to implant these in a host without first configuring and calibrating their function to be regulated by a proper computer interface? Never MIND that we don't know what most of them do!"  
"YOU don't know what most of them do," Yoshi corrected, much to his assistant's frustration, "and besides, many of these devices are simple alien equivalents of technologies and tools we can replicate easily. We can weed out the machines that have too high an energy drain or emit totally unknown energy fields if it proves difficult to operate otherwise."  
"But the interface-"  
"Was originally a cybertronic neural net, which the human brain can easily replace," Yoshi explained to the flabbergasted woman. "The problem, of course, is that such extensive modification to the body in order to accommodate the hammerspace capacitor alone would kill a normal human being, thus necessitating a complete Mortem Override, and thus leaving the brain so dead that a complicated interface would be required anyway." 'Well, except in Igov's case,' the genius thought to himself. But then, nobody can figure out how the General's wife had converted such a large percentage of the man's body to mechanical equivalents without rejection or brain death. And with the technology available almost two decades ago!  
Yamiko rubbed her head as she tried to keep up. The plan sounded ridiculous, and the sort of thing that would come out of a cheesy science fiction story. Of course, all Yoshi's projects were like that. "Why don't we just plug it into an android body, like where it originally came from?"  
"I TOLD you, the power requirements are too high. The only hope for powering any useful number of the modular components are your own bio-plasmic generators."  
Yamiko nodded slowly. "So... we need a superhuman? One of the genetically enhanced grunts, perhaps?"  
Yoshi shook his head, bringing his assistant ever closer to the breaking point. "No, no. The problem with enhanced flesh is that once enough of the flesh is carved away, it stops working. What we need is an all-new kind of healing factor. And an energy field to compensate for the radiation."  
Yamiko sighed deeply. "You already know exactly who you're going to use, don't you?"  
"Yes. Glad you're catching on. Now help me sort out all the devices too unstable to cram into a human body."

Vhhm vhhm vhm-vhm, vhm vhm-vhm-vhm-vhhm... vhhm vhhm vhm-vhm, vhhm vhm-vhm...  
"Okay! All right! I can't take it anymore! Just STOP!" Sailor Mars shouted, feeling as if the high-pitched humming was about to overwhelm her.  
Sailor Moon winced, letting her instrument drop from her mouth. "Mars! You're so mean! I've been waiting for years to put my harmonica lessons to good use! What's wrong with a little music?"  
"Because it reminds me that I've been ARRESTED and am locked up in a bloody CAGE, you meatball-headed twit!" Mars growled.  
Jupiter winced, sympathizing fully with Mars' sentiments, but having far more patience toward their leader's odd little quirks.  
The Senshi were all currently sitting in large animal cages that were obviously intended to hold creatures other than humans. This was attested to not only by the lack of the minimal jail amenities, such as beds and an actual toilet, but also by the overly thick, electrified, titanium-core bars that made up the wall of the cage. And while the good Dr. Seras Tuko of the DAPC's medical branch had done his best to make the cages more comfortable for humans (providing sleeping bags, a bucket with a toilet seat, and a plate of cookies), they still felt understandably humiliated (except for Sailor Moon, who, as it turns out, could be completely satiated with a harmonica and the cookies).  
"Hey, I've got a question..." Venus started out, twitching slightly.  
"You mean, who established a police organization dedicated to the elimination of supernatural threats behind our backs?" Sailor Mercury guessed.  
The Senshi of Love frowned. "That's a good question, but no." Then she pointed toward a large, armored beast laying down outside their prison, "How come WE'RE in a cage, but THAT THING isn't!"  
The Senshi all sweatdropped, and took another long moment to stare at the creature that slept peacefully by the door to the laboratory, its steady, unconscious breathing creating a calm hissing sound that Moon had decided went really well with certain parts of her harmonica song. It was about five feet long, from the head to the base of the tail, and had two powerful rear legs with two smaller front legs, all four armed with fierce-looking talons. Atop the creature's back were mounted two OTHER clawed arms, which occasionally twitched and jerked in the monster's sleep. Its head was a crested, armored beak, with two eye slits set in the thick bone carapace that had no eyelids; even now, the eyes glowed a dim red, and the only way the young women could tell the beast was asleep was because of its soft breathing, lack of motion, and general apathy for its surroundings. The entire thing was armored in segmented, layered plates of armored carapace, from the tip of its beak down to the end of its long, whip-like tail.  
Moon shrugged. "Maybe it's tame?"  
Mars slapped her forehead. "This is SO wrong... how did we come to this?"  
"But still, don't you think it's intriguing?" Mercury asked, causing the others' attention to shift toward her.  
"INTRIGUING! These people dragged us off the street and locked us in a cage!" Jupiter shouted.  
Mercury blushed. "Well... yes, that's true. But just think of it! These people have been striving to accomplish with technology and human ingenuity what we've been doing for years!"  
Jupiter, Mars, and Venus stared at the genius Senshi with half-lidded "you've got to be kidding me" expressions.  
"You see, this is where you and me think differently," Mars explained, "because to ME, that sounds stupid."  
Mercury looked frustrated as she tried to put the DAPC's actions in a different context. "No, think about it! Barring our own arrest, which you can think of as... kind of a fluke, think about what these people are doing! What they've already done!" Seeing that her friends weren't getting it, she tried to break it down further. "At certain times, we fight battles in which whole cities, or even the entire world, is at risk, right?"  
The others nodded slowly.  
"So, what makes you think that if we failed, everyone else would just roll over and die?" Mercury asked, crossing her arms over her chest.  
"Ooh! Ooh! I know!" Moon shouted, waving her hand in the air. "They don't have magical powers!"  
Sailor Mercury nodded. "Precisely! Why should so many people have to rely on the Senshi for survival? What they're trying to do is create a force of normal humans that can fight the sort of battles that we do! By replacing our natural magical abilities with advanced technology and experience!"  
"That's ridiculous!" Mars insisted. "Magic is magic! You can't just screw together a couple of gears and stop a Negawarrior! You need Silver Millennium powers!"  
Mercury shrugged, but looked solemn. "That may be true, but you shouldn't underestimate modern weapons! Besides, not all monsters are weak against magic in particular! The police forces should be trained and outfitted to do whatever they have to do to defend innocents! It's not just our fight, you know!"  
The dissenting Senshi all mulled over this for a moment.  
"Yeah, okay, fine. But they're still jerks for locking us up," Venus decided, hugging her knees to her chest.  
"Granted. But let's be reasonable; we can't expect humanity to just give up and put itself in our hands."  
Mars raised an eyebrow. "You know, you haven't said anything up until now since they arrested us... and then we get this glowing review of a police force you've never heard of before? Is there something else you're not telling us?"  
"Erk!" Mercury blushed, and rubbed the back of her head as she scooted closer to her friends. "Okay, yes," she whispered, aware of the video camera that was mounted above the door. "The thing is, the police Captain, Asuka Takami? She's my cousin."  
"Oh," Jupiter said a bit sullenly.  
"Are you disappointed?" The Senshi of Mercury asked, sweatdropping.  
"Well, yeah, a little. I thought it was going to be something juicier than that."  
Sailor Moon nodded. "I can see the resemblance. You both have the same hair color, and you're built the same way!"  
Mercury made a quick hushing gesture toward her princess. "Yes, I know. Anyway, I haven't seen her in a really long time, which is why I was surprised to see her when she rushed us today. And I'm REALLY surprised to see that she's become a police officer."  
"Why?"  
The blue-haired woman sighed. "My mother and her sister never... really got along, and their differences became far more pronounced once they grew up and married. Auntie made some very poor choices, and Mother all but severed her personal connections to her." She purposely kept her recounting vague, as she didn't want to have to describe to her friends how a family member had become espoused to a crime boss. "Mother had considered trying to take Asuka in herself, but it was too risky, so we ended up leaving her with Auntie. Then they disappeared."  
Inwardly, Mercury was bursting with pride for her cousin. She couldn't imagine what the woman had gone through with her family, but to stave off such cruel influence and become a protector of the peace instead was a true example of iron will. Needless to say, she was already planning on coming back to the DAPC headquarters after the current fiasco was over and done with.  
"Well, if you're related to her, why don't you two hug and have a big reunion that conveniently ends with us getting out of here?" Sailor Venus hissed.  
The other Senshi raised their eyebrows at the Senshi of love, and patiently waited for her to realize the answer to her own question.  
"Oh, right," Venus mumbled. "Another reason why this whole 'secret identity' business sucks."  
"Maybe we can try seducing the guards?" Jupiter suggested, remembering a few key scenes from old spy movies.  
Mars snorted. "There's only one guard, and I don't think you're his type," she said sarcastically, jabbing a thumb at the slumbering zergling.  
Sailor Moon shook her head. "It's going to be okay guys, you'll see. We just have to patient and wait this out." Then she picked her harmonica again. "Now, who's up for singing 'My Darling Clementine'?"  
"Give me that!"  
"Ow! Hey! Leggo!"

Meanwhile, downstairs, an equally serious discussion as to the balance of powers in Tokyo was momentarily interrupted by the DAPC's driver rushing down the stairs and shouting across the room.  
"Hey! Tiro! Come over here, you gotta see this!" Tycho pointed upstairs with both hands as Asuka glared at him, her debriefing being interrupted. "I just downloaded an awesome video feed from a webcam! Come on!"  
Rather than jumping up at the chance, like everyone expected, Tiro didn't even look up from the newspaper he was reading. "What's the feed called?"  
"'Co-ed cosplayers get n3kkid in a flash!'" Asuka twitched at the title.  
Tiro calmly turned the page to the paper, looking unimpressed. "Downloaded it twenty minutes ago. It's not that great. Special effects are nice, but the bluette turns off the feed right in the middle."

As Tycho started sulking while heading back upstairs, Asuka sighed and turned back toward Ranma and Kyle, who were squatting patiently in front of her. Snake was nearby too, but seemed to be giving his whole attentions to something outside the window, and wasn't really paying attention.  
"So, what, exactly, have we all learned today?" Asuka said condescendingly to the two men.  
Ranma gulped. "Uh... shoot first, THEN banter with the enemy?"  
Asuka nodded. "AND?"  
"When the enemy is attempting to capture an objective, don't assume that the device they place on the objective is a bomb!" Kyle volunteered.  
"Good. And?"  
"And even if they're being real jerks about us messing up, beating the Captain of the Core forces and throwing him into a dumpster isn't the proper way to deal with the ridicule," Ranma said reluctantly. "... Though I definitely don't regret it."  
"Good. And?"  
Kyle sighed. "And, when using the keypad garage door opener, make sure that your code is accepted and that the door is actually opening before you try and drive through it."  
The police Captain nodded in satisfaction. "Good. Now, the hole isn't THAT big, so I figure you can pay for it out of-" TOOM!  
The assembled officers all winced at the not-uncommon sound of sudden, unsilenced sniper fire, and they all turned to look at Snake, who was grinning as he pulled a large rifle from an open window.  
"And may I ask what THAT was all about?" Asuka said irritably, sticking a finger in her ear and twisting it back and forth.  
Snake gestured out the window. "There was some weirdo in formal wear standing on top of the next building over scoping out the HQ. Got 'im though."  
Tiro's eyes bulged. "'Weirdo in formal wear'? You just killed Tuxedo Kamen!"  
"I did not," Snake snapped back, "I got him in the leg! He'll live. Probably."  
Rubbing her forehead in exasperation, Asuka pointed toward Ranma. "Alright, now that that's done with, we have to focus on the issue of us having several relatively popular prisoners that-" TOOM!  
"Oh no, you're not getting up today!" Snake shouted gleefully. Then he turned to the others and chuckled. "Got his other leg."  
"Knock it off!" Asuka growled. "We have five young women in stupid-looking skirts locked up in our laboratory charged with performing unregistered vigilante action beyond the extent of self-defense, endangering civilians, 200,000 yen worth of property damage, carrying an unlicensed magic wand, and witchcraft."  
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Witchcraft is an actual crime?"  
"Oh sure," Snake agreed, nodding to himself as he put down his rifle. "Not only that, but we technically reserve the right to execute them without due process of law, but only if we do it by burning them at the stake. How cool is that!"  
"I don't see what the big deal is," Ranma murmured. Neither he nor Snake or Kyle had visited the prisoners since they got back, though they'd been given the full run-down on what happened. "They broke a law. Book 'em and move on."  
"Originally, that was my exact intention," Asuka said glumly, "but I've been having second thoughts. This is a difficult problem that we're going to have to tip-toe through."  
Then, to Asuka's surprise, a new voice briefly spoke behind her.

"Perhaps I can-" Sailor Pluto began, before being savagely tackled to the ground, her speech being brief mostly because by the time she had teleported in and had begun her trademark "all-knowing one coming from nowhere" technique for appearing mysteriously omnipotent, she realized that four of the five people in the room were already lunging for her.  
Unable to dodge in time, and not being able to overpower Ranma and Kyle even in her Senshi form, the guardian of time was slammed against the floor, with her arms held firm on either side of her, and a Pancor Jackhammer aimed right between her eyes.  
She sweatdropped, suddenly being able to better appreciate the situation that the Inner Senshi had managed to get themselves into.  
"What the hell! Who are you!" Asuka demanded.  
Pluto sighed, showing considerable control for someone just a finger-twitch away from death. "I am the-"  
"Wait, hold that thought," Asuka interrupted, "I can understand how Ranma, Kyle, and even Snake would sense her and attack, but how did YOU know she was here?"  
Tiro, who was straddling the Time Senshi so as to keep her pinned and restrict movement of her legs (or so he would insist later), chuckled and made a "V" with his fingers. "Babe radar, remember?"  
"Wonderful. I'm overjoyed you managed to find an obscure, vaguely useful application for it," the Captain mumbled, massaging her head. "Okay, so what were you saying?"  
Sailor Pluto cleared her throat, and leveled an icy glare at Snake. "I'm Sailor Pluto, leader of the Outer Senshi. I'm here to help take the Sailors off your hands. Something I cannot negotiate if I'm held on the floor at gunpoint."  
Snake's eyes narrowed to match hers. "Oh, really? Well, you can negotiate their release from within their cage, then! You're under arrest for teleporting into a police station!"  
The others looked up from Pluto to stare at Snake.  
"Lieutenant, that's not a crime," Asuka deadpanned.  
"Oh..." Snake frowned. "Breaking and entering?"  
Asuka shook her head. "This room in this station is accessible to the general public at all times unless HQ is closed for the night."  
"Witchcraft!" Snake yelled, causing the Senshi of Pluto to sweatdrop. "We've already confirmed that's a crime!"  
"How do we know she's a witch?" The Captain asked, not immediately disregarding the possibility.  
"She did teleport into the office."  
"With that outfit, she's **gotta** be some sort of magic-throwing freak."  
"She turned me into a newt!"  
"Burn her!"  
Pluto had, understandably, had quite enough of this by now, and began to shove the assorted police officers off of her, some small part of her mind really hoping that they weren't seriously going to shoot her for her resistance. "That's enough! I'm here on serious business! Get OFF of me!"  
Tiro and the others reluctantly backed away, being (mostly) kidding about the string of comments about witches. Besides, all present were fairly sure that Kyle had never spent any time as a newt.  
"ANYWAY," Pluto began irritably, "I've come here to make an offer for the release of the other Senshi."  
Asuka's eyes narrowed. "'An offer'? We don't accept bribes."  
"Not right in front of the ranking officer, anyway!" Kyle said, shaking his head.  
Ignoring the Captain's glare, Pluto continued. "Don't think of it as a bribe, think of it as the collection of a fine, and a vast simplification of a very dangerous and complicated scenario."  
Seeing that she had Asuka's interest, Pluto smirked and went on. "Think about it; on top of the mess of paperwork and government uproar this is going to cause, it would be a public relations apocalypse for your department, which isn't doing very well in that arena as it is." As the Captain's eyebrow rose, the Senshi of Time gave her key argument, and the final push. "Besides, if a monster attack were to occur while you had the Senshi incarcerated, and people were hurt, think of the repercussions. If the government were to think you were endangering the safety of the public rather than enforcing it..."  
"All right, all right Miss Mystery, I get it," Asuka said dryly. "You win. However, there's still one other-"  
"The Senshi's registration forms," Pluto said, cutting the Captain off as she held out a stack of filled-out forms that she hadn't been holding a moment ago. "In triplicate."  
"Well, what about-" Asuka began, only to be cut off again.  
"Money," Pluto said neutrally, handing Ranma a black leather suitcase that she again managed to procure despite the fact that she was wearing a skin-tight outfit with a miniskirt.  
"Touche, Pluto-san," Asuka said carefully, her respect for the taller woman growing. "Very well, then the Senshi are-"  
"Hey! This thing is full of Playgirl and Iron Man magazines!" Snake shouted in surprise, being able to read the English titles after Ranma had cracked open the suitcase.  
As an atomic red coloring started to cover her face, Pluto produced another suitcase and snatched the first one away, desperately grasping the case full of magazines that her future self had given her to get through all those lonely nights watching the gates of time for so many millennia  
. Snake checked the briefcase, glancing at the dark purple-skirted Senshi warily. "Cash this time. And lots of it."  
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a deal." Asuka whirled around and idly gestured for their guest to follow her. "They're being kept upstairs, though I suppose you already knew that."  
"I did," Pluto responded mysteriously. "And I also knew that the creature guarding the upstairs lab wouldn't have been quite so... tactful as your officers in subduing me had I teleported up there."  
'Hmm... superhuman abilities AND common sense. Don't see much of that around here.' "If I may lead the way..."

Pluto and Asuka entered the upstairs containment lab almost at the same time, and were treated to the not-too-rare sight of seeing Sailor Mars attempting to shove a musical instrument down Sailor Moon's throat, while the other Senshi struggled to keep her back.  
Pluto sighed. "It's never easy..."  
"Believe me, I can sympathize," Asuka murmured, noting that similar scenes had occurred between Tycho and Ranma.  
The Senshi of Pluto walked up to the cage, and twitched upon noting that none of the Senshi had realized someone had even entered. She cleared her throat meaningfully.  
"Mars! I'm sorry! Really! Please don't hurt me anymore!" Sailor Moon cried, trying her best to hide behind Jupiter as Venus and Mercury dragged Mars back.  
"I swear to GOD! What kind of idiot forgets the tune to 'Old MacDonald'! I'm going to carve out your skull and-"  
Bam! The Senshi all jumped at the sound of the Time Staff being slammed down into the floor, and they all turned immediately to see who had come to see them while they were preoccupied.  
"PLUTO! Omigosh! When did you get here!" Sailor Moon said excitedly. "Are you here to bail us out? Thanks! I was afraid I'd have to call my parents, and that would've been REALLY awkward!"  
Pluto twitched again. "Despite all my powers, and all the time I've spent watching the flows of time, THIS is a sight I thought I'd never see."  
The Senshi other than Moon looked appropriately embarrassed, and Venus rubbed the back of her head.  
"Ha! You're telling us! This really came out of the batter's box!" The Senshi of love joked weakly, sweatdropping.  
"That's 'out of left field,' you loon," Mars said mercilessly.  
Pluto shook her head, her cool, unflappable expression quickly returning and masking the momentary crack in her facade. "Be that as it may, the Princess is correct. I've already made arrangements for you to be released, and taken precautions to prevent this from happening again." Then she raised an eyebrow. "And while ultimately it's best that you didn't attempt an escape, I'm wondering why you didn't simply teleport out of the cell?"  
The Inner Senshi blinked, and then took a moment to look at each other.  
"D'oh!" They said as one, each of them having forgotten about that particular power.  
Asuka then stepped forward, feeling that she had an obligation to try and mop up any lingering resentment the Senshi may have had. "Anyway, I'd like to personally apologize for the way that you've been treated, and to let you know that we have nothing against any of you personally, nor are we ungrateful for your heroic actions in the past. But I have procedures and laws to follow," 'unlike the dolts that I command,' she added mentally, "and it wasn't quite justifiable at the time to make an exception for you."  
"Hey, no problem!" Moon said easily, not QUITE reflecting the level of forgiveness granted by the rest of her team, "We monster hunters need to stick together, right!"  
"Right. Whatever. Just don't sue us or anything," the Captain said, immediately deactivating and unlocking the cage gate as soon as it was clear she was forgiven. "Purple skirt here knows the way out. Or teleport outside, for all I care. G'night." Relieved that a major issue was so conveniently and quickly resolved for once, Asuka snapped her fingers to wake up Hunter, and then gestured for the beast to follow her. The zergling roughly shook the sleep from its mind, and eventually following the Captain down the stairs and into the main lobby.

Pluto waited until she was sure the police officer was out of earshot, then shook her head as she regarded the Inner Senshi.  
"Pull yourselves together and come on. We have a LOT to talk about."  
The young women all winced, unpleasant thoughts of where this was going flitting through their minds. 'Oh boy...'

"Anyway, times have changed a bit, meaning that whenever possible, the Senshi should keep as low a profile as possible. We're swiftly approaching a point in time in which the current order will be obliterated by the Great Freeze, where the Princess can properly emerge and Crystal Tokyo can finally come to fruition." Pluto led the Inners around yet another street corner, ignoring the gaping stares of the pedestrians wandering the street this late in the evening; they were still in their uniforms, as Pluto didn't want to risk them de-transforming anywhere near the DAPC station.  
"Until then, very little action will be required by the Senshi, and any appearances you make can only complicate things," the Senshi of Pluto chided as they finally moved on to an empty street.  
Mercury nodded. "Okay... so what do you know about the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment?"  
"I can tell you that they're good at what they do, and that with their establishment the Senshi will most likely not be needed in the defense of Tokyo until the world is sheathed in ice." Seeing the Inners' surprised expressions, Pluto shrugged. "Technology may never fully offer the same degree or range of advantages as magic, but it comes closer every day. The civilizations of the world as we know it already possess many weapons that could have defeated some of the weaker enemies you've fought in the past, and the DAPC is a dedicated and elite force. They will do fine. What's important is that you get back to your lives and stay out of danger."  
The Inner Senshi nodded, though Venus spoke up a moment later. "Pluto, why are we still walking? There's no one here. Can we de-transform now?"  
The Senshi of Time's eyes narrowed, and she turned to look behind herself. "I could have sworn we were being watched..."  
Quickly flipping out her visor, Mercury did a quick scan, and shook her head. "This entire block is an industrial sector that's closed for the night, and there are no life signs. No unusual energy patterns, either."  
Choosing not to speak further on the topic and dwell on her growing paranoia, Pluto led the Senshi into an alley with a swift gesture.

Unit Shin-Alpha, a modified Mark VI combat android taken from Mishima Heavy Industries' stolen production lines, remained on low-power mode as it skulked in the shadows from the nearby parked cars, its own visibility all but uninhibited by the shadows of the alleyways.  
Watching the Senshi pose briefly, the android noticed the distinct change in energy readouts from the young women, as well as the sudden relocation of mass as their uniforms were suddenly replaced with trendy street clothes.  
After the brief sequence, the android continued stalking the women briefly, making several more detailed close-up recordings as the Senshi passed under the many street lights that illuminated the majority of the city.  
All at once, the assassin droid stopped, receiving the command from its master indicating the objective had been completed.  
Turning on its heel, and moving with such stealth that it bordered on absolute silence, the android skulked away into the shadows of the buildings, eventually jumping atop the roof of one such structure, and making its way through the darkened city.  
On its way back to base, the android stopped momentarily when it heard a groaning sound, and stopped its progress, engaging its stealth capabilities to their fullest extent while analyzing it surroundings.  
According to GPS sensors, it was very close to its previous monitoring station, which was also marked as dangerous territory to be otherwise avoided: DAPC headquarters.  
Noting that a human's cry of distress ranked pretty darn low on the list of priorities **without** being in a grade "A" danger zone, Shin-Alpha turned back toward its objective and fled, being even more careful to keep to the shadows and minimize noise.

Groan! "Hey! ... Is anybody there!" Tuxedo Kamen shouted, having sworn he heard a scuffing sound on the same roof he was lying on. Unfortunately, there were no lights on the roof, and he was unable to make out anything moving around him until it had already passed on.  
"Th-The hell with this!" The frustrated side-kick shouted, grasping his bloodied legs. "I tried! Usagi can get herself out of whatever her problem is now!" With that angry declaration the Senshi's part-time protector grabbed the edge of the roof and dragged himself over to it, eventually pulling himself up so that he could see over the edge.  
He took a long look down at the first set of fire escapes that would have allowed for him to get down to the streets, as the large lead ammunition currently implanted in his calves firmly protested any running or jumping.  
Frowning, he looked for any handholds that would have allowed him to get to the first fire escape. There were none. And the leap down would have been an impressive leap for a normal, uninjured person. The masked prince briefly considered where a superhuman, injured person was on the scale.  
"Maybe I'll just spend the night up here..."

Ranma held up a hand to shield his eyes as he looked out upon the vast field of grass stretched out before him, and blinked as a bright yellow sun poured soft light down on him.  
He was perched at the very tip of a huge cliff, and looking down, the pigtailed man could make out a gigantic crystal spire in the distance. It glowed with a cheery, calming sort of energy, and Ranma immediately found himself thinking about all the peaceful, quiet memories in his life, each one flitting through his mind and concluding in the space of a second.  
Needless to say, he ran out of memories after ten or twelve seconds, and Ranma started to look around himself to get a better feel for where he was. He had the presence of mind to know he was in some sort of dreamscape, and yet he also knew that he was far too aware, and that the details of this dream were far too sharp and distinct to be an ordinary dream.  
"You're probably wondering where you are right now," said a soft, lilting voice from right next to him, and Ranma jumped as he realized he was sitting next to a tiny, winged woman with long, flowing blonde hair and wearing a pristine white gown.  
The small fairy-like person smiled up at him. "Do not be afraid. I am Queen Serenity, and I am here to guide you."  
Ranma blinked. "Guide me? Guide me where?"  
"To the apparition you see before you," Serenity said, missing Ranma's frown. "This is but a spectre of a possible future, a current in an ocean of possibilities."  
The spiritual essence of the Queen looked down at her lap. "I have chosen you, Ranma Saotome, to lead my warriors. This most sacred of responsibilities is-" THWAP!  
The tiny spirit's monologue was cut short as Ranma smashed her with a large flyswatter, flattening her against the pad of plastic and steel mesh.  
Holding the flyswatter out over the edge of the cliff, Ranma shook the handle of it, watching the flattened fairy-woman slowly peel off the pad and then gently float downward on some errant breeze, like a dry leaf or sheet of paper.

"Well, that's over and done with," Ranma said to himself, tossing the flyswatter off the cliff as well and dusting off his hands. "Maybe now I can get back to my normal dreams!"  
"RANMA SAOTOME, HERO OF THE EARTH! At last I have found you!"  
Ranma turned around, and then smirked. "Why, if it isn't M. Bison, insane supervillain bent on world domination! Come to try your luck at defeating me again? Ha! As if!"  
"You won't be so cocky for long, Saotome!" The video game boss character shouted, powering up his aura. "In front of this cadre of swooning female hostages who I brought along just so you could rescue them, I will crush you like a bug!"  
"Oh, Ranma! Help us!" The women began to cry out.  
"Beat that mean, ugly M. Bison!"  
"Wow! You're so cool!"  
"You can beat him Ranma! You're the greatest martial artist who ever lived!"  
Basking liberally in the gratuitous praise, Ranma shifted into a battle stance. "Let's do this!"

Sakura sniffled as she waved to her former partners, dressing in a form-fitting pink gown as she stood in front of Tycho's car.  
"I just... I can't believe it's all over!" She cried, tears of sorrow falling down her cheeks as the DAPC officers gave her chuckled reassurances and hearty pats on the back.  
Sakura Tekai had prepared an actual speech to commemorate her retirement from the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment, but alas, had ended up pulling it out and reading it, and subsequently crying over it, so many times since she wrote it that the entire thing had become a horribly wet, blotted mess... which was good for the officers she was speaking to, since none of them really wanted to turn the affair into a sob-fest, anyway.  
Sakura had finally landed her dream job working for the Red Cross as an actual field doctor, her years of experience with the DAPC not only giving her valuable experience that may come in handy while on assignment in faraway war zones, but also removing her queasiness at the sight of blood, as she had seen such horrible and disgusting things over the past year that the most prominent nemesis to her career as a doctor truly did seem trivial and ridiculous in comparison. This also underlined another major attraction to the job, in that it was very unlikely to take her into frenzied, bloody combat with the most hideous and monstrous beasts both known and unknown to man; Sakura was no fighter, and a year ducking the front lines and hiding behind solid warriors like Ranma and Asuka had driven the point home.  
The klutzy blonde wailed and latched onto Junko, almost crushing the woman who had been her dearest friend in the department. "I'm going to miss you guys so much! I don't know what I'll do!"  
Asuka sweatdropped. "Hopefully get some **real** friends," she said half-jokingly.  
Glomp! The bluette gagged as she was next on the death-grip list. "Captain! You've always been so patient and nice to me! I'll never forget you!"  
"Patient and nice? In what universe was this?" Snake deadpanned, not having recalled any such tolerance from their Captain.  
Junko kicked him lightly in the shins. "Hush. Let her dream."  
Ranma was just starting to inch away from the crowd, when the blonde snatched him up just as quickly. "And Ranma! Thank you so much for saving my life over and over again!"  
The pigtailed man blushed and idly tugged on his pigtail. "Aw, it was nothin'..."  
"Yeah, okay, okay, moving on with the hugs," Tiro said, hoping to get one last feel on Sakura before she finally left.  
Asuka shook her head and shoved him aside. "We'll have none of that, thank you very much." Then she smiled faintly and held up a folded garment. "Sakura Tekai, in spite of your less-than-perfect record of service and multiple failings of duty during your time here, I considered you less of an obstacle to success than Tycho."  
The aforementioned driver, naturally, looked offended at the statement, while Sakura just wiped another tear from her eye and smiled brightly like she had won an Oscar.  
"And so," Asuka continued, "putting aside my bitter sarcasm for just a moment, things aren't going to be the same without you here. For one thing, now that you're gone, we'll have no one to bridge the huge gap between Kyle and the rest of us in terms of intelligence."  
Kyle, as usual, merely nodded, not realizing he was being insulted. Sakura kept smiling.  
"I thought you were going to put the bitter sarcasm aside," Ranma whispered to the police Captain, frowning.  
"What sarcasm? I was telling the truth!" She whispered back in annoyance. Then she cleared her throat and held out the bundle in her hands. "This is your DAPC uniform, Sakura, which we managed to get out of your locker before Snake and Tiro looted the rest of it. We also have your body armor and badge, both of which we'd like you to have. To remember us by, or if you get in a firefight, or something. Please don't hug me again." She added the last part as she saw the blonde getting ready to lunge for her.  
"And I've also dug up your sidearm from the stuff I took," Snake said, stepping up and handing her a 9 mm. pistol. "We all signed the barrel for you. Plus I found that old sissy bolter stun gun I gave you when you first came here!" Snake had forgotten to request Sakura stay off him, and was immediately subjected to a painful, overly-affectionate hug. Meanwhile, Tiro was sorely wishing he had thought to give Sakura a going-away present.  
"Thank you all so much!" The blonde woman cried. Then she spied Hunter sitting on the outside of the circle and rushed him, hugging the zergling strongly around his crested, bony neck. "Ooh, Hunter I'll miss you too! You've been such a good boy! Yes you have! Yes you have!" She said, rubbing the killer alien's neck and making baby noises to him in the way that only she could manage without risking having her face clawed off. "Does Hunter baby want to come with me to the airport? Huh? Do ya?"  
The others all sweatdropped, deciding that would definitely be a bad idea. Surprisingly, it was Ranma who provided the solution.  
"Sorry Sakura, but me and Hunter are gonna take a walk later today to meet someone. It's... kind of a special occasion." He tugged on his pigtail again in embarrassment as Sakura looked disappointed.  
"Oh... well, then I guess this is it, huh?" The blonde said sadly as Tycho opened up one of the back doors for her.  
"Hey, don't sweat it!" Junko said cheerfully, "I'm sure in a few months' time, Tokyo will be a big enough war zone that you'll be shipped right back to see us!"  
Sakura was still smiling as she sweatdropped. "That's a horrible thought!" Then she turned toward Snake, twitching. "Snake, please don't go and start any wars!"  
"I don't make promises I can't keep," the Lieutenant said simply, causing the blonde woman to grimace.  
"Well," Sakura finally said, climbing into Tycho's car. "Goodbye everyone! I'll miss you!"

Sakura's departure from the DAPC weighed on Ranma's mind as he led Hunter into the park, his hands in his pockets as he stared up at the sky.  
'Wow. She's really gone, now. I guess I really didn't think about it before when she was leaving, but... we really had been through a lot together.' The pigtailed man smiled faintly as he remembered moving in and briefly living with the Tekai siblings, his brief foray into dating her, and the playful flirting and less playful catfights that tended to occur around her. He couldn't tell if it was just his ego eating up the attention or genuine appreciation for the affection, but Ranma realized he'd miss the short, embarrassing hugs Sakura gave him whenever she got an excuse, and he'd miss watching her snap at other women that showed an interest in him (though he was pretty sure that part was just ego feed).  
It also brought another point to the forefront: Ranma had been with the DAPC for over a year. And in that year he'd been through a LOT. He'd seen anomalies and oddities that easily rivaled the strange scenarios that plagued his teenage life, and seen acts of evil and cruelty that would have left the tyrants of China who he had dueled back then sick with disgust.  
He'd also seen a lot of good being done, either through heroic sacrifice, righteous fury, uncompromising love, or just properly directed bloodlust. He'd seen vile hatred and evil accomplish great and wonderful things, and seen good and just intentions shatter people's lives. And while he hadn't come away from those experiences with a deep, meaningful life lesson like he felt he should have, the experiences themselves were remarkable enough for him to treasure.  
Ranma had learned about unconditional friendship, and in keeping that friendship even when the other people weren't very good friends at all. He had learned about family, and how most people were probably better off without one. He had learned about love, and watched it crush a man like an egg in a power vice.  
And then of course, there was the personal hardships and trials he himself had endured, ever making him stronger and teaching him new ways to survive. In the space of a year he had defeated two evil clones, stopped multiple giant robots, lost his virginity (finally!), stopped a plot for world domination, unearthed forbidden techniques and stained his honor as a martial artist forever for the sake of a practical joke and later for a cheap ki attack, contracted a lethal retrovirus, was infested by a mind-controlling parasite, gained and lost two fiancees, learned and used and then forgot the _bakusai tenketsu_ no less than twelve times, and contributed significantly to the extinction of an entire alien race.  
Ultimately, Asuka was right; Sakura was a very minor part of the team, being little more (actually a little less) than an extra body to carry a gun and drive a car when the skilled officers were off doing important, useful things. So they wouldn't miss her too badly in the long run, and especially not when times got hard.  
'But still... she was there! She went through all that stuff too!' Ranma chuckled to himself. He couldn't imagine having gone on those adventures without the superhuman abilities he'd gained through his years of training and conditioning, and had wondered more than once how the other "normal" officers had dealt with the level of combat that frequently exploded around them. He guessed that when Sakura settled into her new job, she'd either be in complete bliss, or bored out of her skull.  
"Ranma-sama! Overe here!"

The pigtailed cop broke out of his reverie and smiled as he caught sight of a girl waving to him from where she was sitting on a park bench.  
With Hunter in tow, which was made all the more apparent by the wide berth or outright flight of the other pedestrians in the park, Ranma strolled up the girl while waving at her. "Hey Ta-chan! What's up?"  
Hotaru Tomoe slid off the bench and knelt next to Hunter, petting the zergling's beak without any hint of fear. "Hello Hunter! How are you?"  
The alien beast made a grumbling, clicking noise deep in his throat, which Ranma could only guess was an affectionate sound because Hunter made no move to eviscerate the school girl who was holding him.  
Hotaru was a short, pale, skinny girl, being so thin that Ranma had wondered on more than one occasion if she might have one of those eating disorders that insecure women sometimes got to stay underweight. She had shoulder-length dark purple hair, and eyes to match, and usually wore black, laced clothing that Ranma figured meant something to people more culturally aware than he was. She claimed to be 17, but Ranma didn't believe her; she looked closer to 13 or 14 years old. Ranma had guessed that she either had a crush on him and was trying to get him to think she was old enough for him to date, or that she really did have an eating disorder, and it was stunting her growth. As time went on the second theory seemed more and more likely, as Hotaru also seemed to be quite weak and sickly, which could easily result from malnutrition.  
"Did anything exciting happen to you this week?" Hotaru asked, gently grasping Hunter's spine-mounted arms so that she could climb onto his back.  
Ranma sighed and laughed. "Exciting? Yeah, just a little. Fought off another terrorist cyborg assault, for one." He began to talk about the background of the battle, not bothering to edit out the parts that were not supposed to be public knowledge. As far as he was concerned, if you couldn't trust a friendly little girl playing in a public park not to betray government secrets, then you couldn't trust anyone, society was already doomed, and there was thus no point in keeping secrets in the first place.  
Hotaru listened intently as she rode on Hunter's back, hanging on to every detail as Ranma gave a scene-by-scene recount of the battle, including what he had heard from his companions in other areas.  
Ranma had quickly become an excellent storyteller in the time he had been making these visits to her, and in that same time span she had become increasingly interested in the human conflicts that existed outside of Senshi business and her own little slice of personal space.  
The more she heard about it, the harder she found it to believe that such horrors and strife took place in the same city where she lived, and yet stayed distinct and separate from the magical, apocalyptic foes that demanded the attention of the Sailor Senshi. She didn't mind admitting that at times she felt downright ashamed for standing by and not doing something herself, when she possessed the power to make a difference.  
However, her adoptive parents Haruka and Michiru insisted that such things were beneath them; human issues were for humans to deal with, without the interference of magical superheroes. And while it was perfectly appropriate to use her powers to put a stop to a crime in progress, actively pursuing human evils was fraught with complications and moral dilemmas. The Senshi existed to protect humankind from blatantly malicious threats it could not face otherwise, and could not be bothered with issues like terrorism and mad science.  
She didn't like it, but Hotaru had to admit they had a point. From listening to Ranma's stories, the "real" struggles that occurred past the sunny image of a youma-free Tokyo were of a far more grisly and vile sort than what she'd seen as a Senshi, and the descriptions of a superhuman vigilante who **was** actively pursuing justice, the Catholic gunman Rayden Shikodan, disturbed her greatly.  
Still, Hotaru really liked being with Ranma and hearing about the things he did. She could still remember when they first met...

(That's right, it's a flashback sequence! You know you want it!)

Hotaru propped up her chin with her elbows as she watched the duck pond behind the park bench, completely absorbed in the quiet, calming sights around her.  
She gave the couples and other people passing by none of her attention, and in turn, none of them approached her. Sitting on a park bench all alone, wearing dark clothing and dark makeup and watching the animals listlessly as she was put out lonely vibes like crazy, but this was Japan, and Japanese culture dictated that one didn't go approach and make friends with strange girls out of the blue, but instead taught one to respect her space and solitude.  
So the passersby gave the girl her berth, and even those who were looking for a bench to sit at usually decided to keep walking to find another one. Story of her life.  
Hotaru sighed and finally turned away from the ducks. It almost felt wrong for a girl like her to make such a complaint, but she was bored. Very bored.  
High school life was just that: a vast gray field of studies and paperwork. And it was boring.  
Other girls made friends or romances, but not Hotaru. Because of her unique healing gifts, she had been shunned in junior high, and often bullied. She had hated and dreaded going to school back then.  
As it turned out though, as people got older, they stopped indulging their fear of the abnormal, and started ignoring it, perhaps having their time consumed by other things, or maybe realizing that there could be legal ramifications for their actions now that they were closer to being adults. Whatever the reason, disgust turned to apathy, and Hotaru was now merely shunned, and never bullied. And as a result, she hated high school, but didn't really dread it anymore. Even when she stopped being hesitant and shy about her abilities and healed any papercut or bruise she could find, people just mumbled a quick thanks and rushed off, not deigning to give the weird healing girl a moment more of their time.  
Being the Senshi of Saturn should have provided plenty of excitement, but quite simply, it didn't. The Senshi hadn't had a battle in years, never mind a major conflict that might have required the attention of the Outer Senshi in addition to the Inners, who were usually in the thick of the action.  
Hotaru sighed. Even visiting the Inner Senshi just to spend time with a friend was hard now, as Chibi-Usa had returned to the future, and college life seemed to consume all the others' time as they crammed their personal ventures and rich private lives around their studies. She was extremely envious of them, and planned on going to the same college once she finished high school.  
So, here she was, ignored instead of bullied, with every day passing by peacefully instead of bringing new conflict for the Senshi to overcome. And she knew she should have been grateful for it... but instead it was driving her crazy, and that's probably what bothered her most of all.

"STOP! MY PURSE! STOP, THIEF!"  
It should be noted that while Hotaru was bored out her mind at the time, and the robbery occurring more-or-less right in front of her was an interesting distraction from the monotony of her normal day-to-day, it was hardly the sort of excitement she was hoping for. Watching the purse-snatcher sprint by, she only felt worse as she couldn't hope to do anything; by the time she found someplace to transform, the man would be long gone.  
Watching sullenly as the man ran through the grass field of the park, shoving the few pedestrians near him away, she noticed that further back, where the grass gave way to a thick wall of trees and scrub that obscured vision, many of the plants were shaking or swaying violently.  
The thief had just reached the wall of greenery, and was going to run through it to aid his escape, when the shaking reached its crescendo, and a huge, claw-bearing shape burst from the bushes right at the man.  
The man screamed in horror as the beast's front claws dug into his shoulders, easily slicing through shirt and flesh as he was slammed onto the grass. He continued screaming as he looked up into the fearsome beak that snapped viciously above him, dropping long, thick ropes of saliva over his face and chest.  
Hotaru's eyes widened, as did those of the park's other pedestrians. Many of the other people in the park quickly began to yell and run themselves, fearing that monsters had overrun the place. Most of those that stayed recognized the creature from a recent newspaper story about the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment, and merely backed away while still staying close enough to watch.  
Neither Hotaru nor the theft victim had heard of the DAPC, but both watched with horrid fascination as the thief begged for his life to the killer alien pinning him down, tossing the purse away in the general direction of the woman he had stolen it from.  
"Hunter! Down! Not so fast!" A moment later, a muscular man with a pigtail, and wearing a blue nylon outfit that marked him as a police officer broke through the brush, and pulled on one of the creature's top-mounted claws, indicating that it should stand down.  
The beast made a disgruntled, rumbling sound deep in his throat, as if arguing with his master.  
"No. This one isn't food. Back off," the officer said firmly, pulling harder on the zergling's claws. Reluctantly, Hunter released his prey, who immediately tried to stumble to his feet and run.  
The police officer easily caught the man by the back of his shirt. "I don't think so, pal. I saw what happened. You're under arrest." Wagging his finger as if speaking to a child, he started to lecture the man. "Maybe this will teach you to keep to honest work from now on. Or at least regret turning to crime. You know, whatever."  
The thief, horrified as he was, managed to come to his senses well enough to speak. "A-Are you... Are you from the DAPC? You and that monster?" he asked, shaking.  
The pigtailed man nodded. "Officer Ranma Saotome, DAPC. Says so on the patch over here, see?" He was moving his jacket sleeve to show the thief, when the man suddenly moved onto his knees and bowed down toward the ground.  
"Please! I'm begging you! Just kill me before you eat me! That's all I ask!"  
Ranma sweatdropped. "Uh... are you talking to me, or Hunter?"  
"Whichever one of you is hungriest!" The man cried, squeezing his eyes shut as he awaited the decapitating blow.  
Instead, Ranma growled and kicked the man over. "Oh, get a grip you loser! Get outta here!" Giving the man another kick, and hoping that he wouldn't regret letting the man go instead of making an actual arrest, he picked up the dropped purse and approached its owner, Hunter trailing behind him menacingly.  
"Here Ma'am I think this-" before he could finish the sentence, the woman snatched her purse away and ran, screaming the whole way about monsters as she clutched her recovered property against her chest.  
"You're welcome!" Ranma shouted somewhat bitterly, before kneeling down to pet Hunter.

Hotaru watched the entire exchange with the sort of morbid fascination one usually reserved for autopsies, and made a note of how even those few pedestrians still around who didn't look scared spitless of the officer and his pet were quickly leaving the area, unwilling to risk being around once their attentions weren't distracted elsewhere.  
Despite her own fear upon looking at the beast, her heart went out to the man, and she felt irritated that the woman couldn't even manage to simply thank the officer before she fled. Here he had done nothing wrong but managed to help her where the others around the park would not, and he was rewarded with fear. It was a situation she was all too familiar with, and it left a bad taste in her mouth.  
Swallowing nervously, Hotaru got up from the bench and approached the two.

"Easy there, big fella. Stay still. Last thing I need is Asuka breathing down my throat thinking you killed somebody today," Ranma mumbled, wiping the blood off of Hunter's front claws with a napkin while the zergling made disgruntled growling noises.  
"E-Excuse me?"  
Turning his head, Ranma was surprised to see a young girl standing behind him, clasping her hands behind her back while she stared somewhat apprehensively at Hunter.  
"What's wrong? Did that guy steal something of yours, too?" The pigtailed man asked, standing up to rush after the crook.  
"Oh, no! Nothing like that!" The girl said, blushing as she stared at the ground. "Uhm... I-I'm Hotaru Tomoe!" She said suddenly, bowing sharply to the man.  
Ranma blinked, then shrugged and bowed back. "Hi. I'm Ranma Saotome. Is something the matter?"  
"No, I..." Hotaru looked down at Hunter, who stared back at her through angry, blood-red eyes. "Wh-What is that?" she finally asked, pointing toward the zergling.  
"Oh! This is Hunter!" Ranma said, slapping him on the back of the neck. "He's a zergling!"  
Hotaru stared. "Okay... what's a 'zergling'?"  
"Apparently, it's a small killer alien that comes from a far-off galaxy... in a video game."  
Hotaru continued to stare.  
Ranma just shrugged. "I don't really get it either, but he's pretty much our pet and mascot down at the DA, and he comes in handy."  
"DA?"  
"DAPC," Ranma explained, giving the full acronym. "It stands for Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment. We hunt robots and mutants and stuff."  
Hotaru's eyes widened. "Robots and mutants? Really?"  
Ranma nodded. "Yup. Sometimes demons and aliens, too. Hey, you wanna take a walk with us? I can tell you all about it." He gestured toward Hunter, who made a clicking sound that, like all his vocal reactions, sounded violent and angry.  
The purple-haired girl looked apprehensively at Hunter, but then she reaffirmed her resolve not to act like the scared simpletons that were staring at them from twenty meters away, and stepped up closer.  
"I'd love to!"

Ever since then, they would meet on Monday afternoons in the park and talk to each other, both of them delighting in the company. Hotaru loved it because Ranma was the most exciting and interesting man she had ever met, and always had a new story to tell that sucked the boredom right out of her. And Ranma loved it because Hotaru was the only person he could talk to so freely for a short period of time without any chance of being led into a practical joke involving high-grade explosives.  
Hotaru had developed a powerful crush on Ranma, but had forced herself early on to let it go. Besides the fact that Ranma had plenty of beautiful, intelligent women his own age to choose from, he also didn't believe she was 17, which was a reaction she got from most people. Chronologically she would be 18 in just a few months, but because of the side-effects from using her powers as Sailor Saturn, as well as her illness, she looked like a pre-teen, and she was growing at a painfully slow rate. Still, it was a nice thought...  
She had also grown to become quite fond of Hunter, who seemed perfectly willing to endure her weight and minor abuses while being ridden without lashing out at the girl. Hotaru had even managed to sort out some of the creature's different vocalizations and try to associate each one with a certain emotion or response. Not an easy task, as anything coming from the zergling's beak sounded absolutely visceral, but it was an interesting project.  
As Ranma moved on to the next topic, he jarred Hotaru's attention.  
"Wait, you arrested the Sailor Senshi!" She asked, horrified.  
Ranma shrugged. "Well, **I** didn't, but yeah, we had them arrested. Apparently Asuka was serious about enforcing the registration rules for vigilante action."  
Hotaru sweatdropped. She thought it was pretty strange to force Rayden to fill out forms and register when he was essentially a wanted criminal, but it did make sense. "But they're defenders of love and justice! You can't just lock them up!"  
"Relax Ta-chan, we let 'em go. After a bribe from that Pluto chick. And now they're free and registered, so they can blow up whatever they want, and we'll just bill 'em later."  
"Don't you think it's counter-productive to make people pay for damage they cause when saving lives?" Hotaru said disapprovingly.  
Ranma nodded. "Sure I do. But that's what we have to do, so dammit, we're going to spread the pain around as much as we can!"  
Hotaru couldn't help but laugh at the statement, though she did worry for her friends; she didn't think they had any idea what they were getting into if they started tangling with the DAPC.  
"... Ranma, I wanted to let you know that I won't be here next week," Hotaru said hesitantly, blushing slightly. "The school year is coming to a close, you see, and I have a class trip to Okinawa coming up, and it lasts a week..."  
Ranma nodded. "Ah, yes. I remember my class trip in high school. We went to Hokkaido."  
Hotaru blinked. "Really? What was it like? I've never been on a vacation with anyone but my parents before."  
"It was complicated," Ranma said, frowning suddenly. "There was a hot spring inn, and somehow I ended up in the girls' baths like eight times. Then later there was a mixed bath, and... well, then things got REALLY ugly."  
Hotaru sweatdropped, but listened intently.  
"By the time we went home, six people had to be airlifted out of the area by medivac helicopter, two were possessed by restless spirits, an entire Ninja clan had been hospitalized, and I had somehow gotten engaged again." Ranma shrugged. "That relationship didn't last long, though. She melted pretty quick once she came to Nerima."  
More sweatdrops came, and Hotaru decided it was time for her visit to end. She enjoyed visiting Ranma, and would miss him terribly come next Monday, but she always feared that if she was drawn too far into the retellings of his life that she'd finally lose her grip on her sanity.  
"Well, I'll definitely visit you the week after I get back, okay?" The purple-haired girl said, slowly dismounting from Hunter's back.  
Ranma smirked and rubbed Hotaru on the head, which always got her to pout at being treated like a child. "Hey, whatever you say kiddo. I'll be here."  
He was a bit surprised when Hotaru suddenly hugged him around the torso, and started blushing.  
"Hey, c'mon! People are starting to stare!" Ranma said quietly, slowly turning red.  
"They've been staring. And they're looking at Hunter," she mumbled into his chest.  
Ranma blushed harder. "All right, all right, I'm-Hey!" he shouted suddenly, being taken by absolute surprise as he felt one of Hotaru's hands suddenly squeeze his rear.  
Her face glowing a bright red, Hotaru giggled and ran off before her victim could muster an appropriate response. 'Ha! That'll teach him to treat me like a kid!'  
True to her design, it was several long moments before Ranma's brain finally managed to jar itself into thinking about what had just happened.  
"I'm honestly not sure how to feel about that," he decided after a moment. On the one hand, the grope hadn't felt all that bad, but on the other hand, he was no pedophile, and didn't want to give Hotaru or anyone else watching the wrong idea. Yet, Hotaru insisted she was actually close to what Tiro had termed the "loaded and ready age," and she was pretty cute. But still, she looked way too young, and he didn't want to complicate their friendship by getting her hopes up...  
"Ugh. Women," Ranma muttered in disgust, massaging his head. Then he turned to Hunter. "Be glad you don't have any female alien monsters bugging you. It's way more trouble than it's worth. Let's go home."

Usagi checked her watch as she rushed through her school's soccer field, clicking her tongue as she realized that she was going to be late for her next class... again.  
The blonde sighed as he lamented upon how long it took to copy Ami's notes in the space between her classes, while still maintaining enough time to sprint to the next lecture.  
Taking notes herself during class never occurred to her, the part-time superheroine having long since dismissed such a ridiculous waste of her precious nap time. If the professor was going to continue to insist upon making all his lectures long, hypnotic snooze-fests, then she would happily sleep through it all.  
Thinking of Ami reminded Usagi of her plans to go with her to the DAPC headquarters the next day for what she hoped to be a wonderful and uneventful reunion between two long-lost family members. Ami had wanted to go the day immediately after their arrest, but Usagi desperately wanted to go with her, and their Monday classes were mismatched enough that they couldn't budget enough free time between the both of them.  
Although it was really none of her business, Usagi insisted on coming too; in addition to wanting to see more of the monster-hunting police force from outside their animal cages, she also knew that Ami was very sensitive and awkward in powerful, turbulent emotional situations... an environment where the ponytailed princess thrived. In all likelihood Ami would need the support, and if not, it at least promised to be interesting to watch.

So engrossed was Usagi in planning the next day's hijinks that she never noticed the figure standing in her path until it was too late.  
Thump! "Waaaugh!" Her arms windmilled as she fell backward, and Usagi landed on her rear in a heap as her textbooks scattered all around her.  
"Oh, shoot! I'm really sorry about that! I know I need to pay more attention to where I'm going, but I'm really late for class, and-" She had gotten on her knees to pick up her belongings, when she happened to glance up at who she had run into. She immediately stopped recovering her books, and stared. "Whoah. Who are you?"  
The person she had run into was a beautiful, voluptuous woman who looked to be about her own age, with long, blood-red hair. She was wearing a skin-tight black bodysuit that molded around her curves and breasts, and generally didn't look like accepted college or public wear. Emotionless gray eyes bored into Usagi, who clutched her books to her chest as she stood up.  
"Are you part of a scuba diving class or something? What are you doing out on the soccer field?" The blonde asked suspiciously.  
The woman said nothing for a moment, then bent her arms up at the elbows and clenched her hands into fists.  
"Target located. Subject 7-A: Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon. Beginning retrieval process." Suddenly, a pair of metal fins with several wires and sensory pads along the sides popped up over her head from where they had been previously hidden under her hair. If Usagi hadn't been so shocked at the moment, she would have noted that they bore a striking resemblance to cat ears.  
"Wh-Wh-What!" The blonde started to back away, her eye twitching. "Me? Sailor Moon? Ha! Th-That's ridiculous! What makes you say th-that!"  
"Use of non-lethal force has been authorized," the woman said leadenly.  
Usagi gulped. "Look, I really don't know who you are, but-" Thock! Her things scattered once again, and all the air rushed out of her lungs as the strange woman ran the side of her arm into Usagi's gut, crossing the distance between them far faster than the blonde could track.  
"Ah! Ah! Aaugh!" Usagi began to cough, and tears leaked from her eyes as she slowly crumpled onto the ground, holding her stomach. "Wh... Wh-What are d-doing!" She cried out, her vision already getting blurry.  
The redhead looked down at her. "Transform or you will be destroyed."  
"What! Why! What's going on!" Usagi demanded, wiping away the tears and struggling to stand.  
"Transform or die. A human cannot defeat me." As if in demonstration, the attacker held out a hand toward Usagi, and a yellow-white sphere of energy coalesced into her palm.  
"Yipe!" Usagi dove to the side as the disruptor bolt sailed past her, impacting one of the aluminum stands in an explosion of energy and molten metal.  
'Okay, not good! I think I have to transform!' Checking around herself, Usagi noted that in an incident of remarkable convenience, there was nobody else around to witness her transforming. Taking out her transformation brooch, and wishing that she hadn't stopped carrying her Senshi communicator like Minako had, she raised the piece of magic jewelry and spoke the activation phrase. "Moon eternal power, make-up!"  
Her attacker waited patiently as the transformation took place, betraying no surprise or interest in the swirl of lights and magic.  
After the transformation was complete, Moon pointed at the redhead angrily. "All right, now talk! Who are you, how did you know who I was, and what do you want with me!"  
She wasn't really expecting a proper response, but to her surprise, the redhead gave one.  
"I am a mark VI model NH-711 battle android, designation: Shin-Alpha. I have been observing subjects: Sailor Senshi for the past twenty-four hours. My mission is to neutralize subject 7-A and return to base for debriefing."  
Sailor Moon blinked. "Oh... and I'm subject 7-A, right?"  
"That is correct," the android responded neutrally. Then she moved.  
"Whoa!" Usagi dodged as the android zipped past her, and then turned around to face her opponent-  
Crack!  
- Only to get kicked across the face for her trouble. Moon rolled across the ground from the monstrous impact, reflecting upon the apparent strength of her opponent.  
'Maybe if I lie here and play dead, she'll go away,' Sailor Moon thought, feeling the throbbing pain across her face spread. That idea was dashed as she felt herself being picked up.  
"Hey! What do you think you're doing! You're fighting the wrong way!" The ponytailed Senshi complained as her robotic opponent lifted her up. "You're supposed to fire some sort of strange energy attack at me, and then give me time to fire one back at you! This isn't fair!"  
Rather than respond to her opponent's whining, Shin-Alpha threw her into a wall, causing an explosion of brick and debris as the structure burst outward from the force.  
"Argh..." Sailor Moon clenched her teeth as blood leaked into her mouth, and tried to keep her focus on her opponent, even as the current level of pain demanded that she submit to a state of bawling. 'Got to get it together! Be strong, damn it! She's not going to let you get away with taking a breather! If only the others were here...'  
Shin-Alpha's eyes narrowed. "Force used deemed excessive. Combat authorization downgraded to level two." Then several warning systems went off as her sensors detected a few life-signs approaching from around the building. They were low-level signatures, so there was no chance that the Senshi were approaching to reinforce their leader, but if it were to complete its mission objectives fully, then it had to hurry.  
Sailor Moon slowly stood up, and began her own attack while the android seemed distracted by something. "Moon... Spiral... He-WAUGH!" She shouted in surprise as the android once again crossed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and grabbed hold of her arm.  
Shwink! Three long, sharp-looking claws emerged from the android's free arm, and it clamped them onto Sailor Moon's midriff, though it was strangely careful not to cut into the flesh.  
Moon gulped. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?"  
"Affirmative." With that, the android activated its Tesla claw, sending thick, painful arcs of electricity streaming into its victim.

Thud! Letting Sailor Moon's comatose body hit the ground, Shin-Alpha turned its Tesla claw toward the scattered papers and books that laid on the ground.  
Vhrr... Chunk! Cha-chnk! The claws retracted, and a small tube emerged from the droid's wrist, extending out past its hand.  
FWOOSH! A thick stream of flames poured out of the tube, bathing the dropped items, as well as the general area, in a wash of fire that clung to the grass and debris left from the wall. Slowly it spread outward, covering more of the damaged wall, and the android made sure to launch a brief jet over toward the stands that had been struck by her disruptor. It was a crude method of covering up the site of the attack, and one that would not stand up to experienced scrutiny, but it was sufficient for its master's purposes.  
Grabbing up the unconscious Sailor Moon, Shin-Alpha leapt for the rooftops just as a couple of college students rounded the corner to see what was causing all the noise.  
"Whoa! Fire! Somebody call the fire department!"  
"I've got a cell phone! Get an extinguisher or something, quick!"

"It's all so sad, isn't it?" Sakura said as she stared out the window, watching the rain-drenched scenery pass by as Tycho's car sped along the highway. "That after so long, and after so much, sometimes we just pull up our roots and move on?"  
"If you were someone else, I'd be inclined to agree," Tycho said bluntly, keeping his eyes on the road as he weaved dangerously in and out of the tight-packed traffic to get ahead of the other cars. "But frankly, you should be glad you got through a year of DA enlistment and kept all your limbs."  
The blonde woman grimaced and nodded, being able to fully appreciate Tycho's point of view. "Yeah, I guess it is for the best. And hopefully without me to protect, Ranma will be able to get through more missions without injuries."  
"Doubtful, but it's nice to dream," the driver said, again not mincing words for the sake of sparing feelings. "Aw, man... looks like there's an accident up ahead. Damn." Tycho slowed substantially as he approached the static wall of rear bumpers ahead, and eventually came to a complete stop.  
Sakura shrugged and continued to stare, not really caring about making good time to the airport. 'Bad enough they arranged for me to take a flight from a hub way out in the boonies...'  
Sighing to herself, she thought about Ranma, and the things that might have been had she stayed to be with him, or at least tried harder for a relationship.  
'Bah. It never would have worked out,' she decided. Ranma needed someone smart and competent to be with. Or at the very least, someone who didn't wade into battle alongside him and then use him as a shield against the mechanical and biological horrors they faced regularly. To Ranma, taking a hit for a friend was business as usual, but Sakura felt horrible about each and every wound the martial artist suffered to keep her safe.  
"Hmph. Do you think I could get away with just squeezing into this little lane on the side, here?" Tycho asked, referring to the thin margin of road between the main lanes and the concrete off-road barrier.  
Sakura blinked. "The car is wider than the lane."  
"Betcha I can bump up one side of the car to run those wheels on the barricade!"  
The blonde sweatdropped. "No! Don't do that! Besides, there's a person walking out next to us!"  
At the time she had merely been grasping for reasons not to violate important traffic laws, but after a moment she realized that there WAS a man trudging along in the heavy rain alongside the car, apparently crossing the long stretch of distance covered by the highway on foot.  
Being the caring, compassionate type of woman she was who possessed little to no common sense whatsoever, Sakura immediately opened the door and beckoned to the man.  
"Excuse me! Would you like a ride to wherever you're going?" She shouted over the rumble of car engines, attracting the man's attention.  
The pedestrian, who was a tall, muscular man with black hair secured with a yellow, black-spotted bandanna, turned around at her voice. He was holding a large, red bamboo umbrella up over his head, and was being very careful to stay dry in the heavy rain.  
He brightened immediately at the offer of a ride, and quickly nodded his head, rushing up to the car and opening the door. Then he entered, all the while making absolutely sure to keep himself shielded from the rain, even when it was cumbersome for him.  
"Thanks a lot! I'm Ryoga Hibiki!" The man said, attempting to bow respectfully in the cramped space of the vehicle.  
Sakura smiled. "It's no trouble! I'm Sakura Tekai!" She nodded her head, then glanced toward Tycho.  
"'No trouble' my ass," the driver mumbled, irritated at having to deal with a new passenger without his permission. "Tycho Wattai. Where you headed?" His annoyance was only slightly tempered by the fact that traffic started moving again.  
Ryoga frowned. "Uh, well, I don't really know what it's called, or what the area is called, but I know how to get there. I just need to keep moving east for a few more miles, and then make a-"  
"We're going west," Tycho interrupted, leaving unspoken the fact that Ryoga had been walking in the same direction.  
Ryoga blinked. "Oh. Well, it must have been west, then. Sorry about that. But other than that, I know the way by heart!"  
Tycho looked doubtful. "Look, is this going to take very long? She's kinda got a flight to catch."  
"Tycho, don't be so mean!" Sakura chided, frowning at the ponytailed man. "We should be able to do a good deed once in a while without worrying about how it inconveniences us!" She crossed her arms over her chest, and grinned at Ryoga's grateful expression. "Besides, we have two hours to spare. How long could this take?"

"N'guh? Whazzat?" Sailor Moon woke up groggily to the painful glare of an adjustable lamp glaring right down into her eyes, and the moon princess winced as her mind and body began an accelerated recovery to update her as to her current surroundings.  
Several things became apparent at once. She was in a steel gray room, surrounded by machines , and laying next to a large table covered in strange-looking gadgets that looked like they belonged in one of Ami's video games. She was bound fast to a steel slab, with thick, reinforced metal wrist and ankle bindings that seemed deliberately made to hold subjects of superhuman strength. Her attacker was nowhere to be seen. Her jaw, while it seemed to have healed significantly since the fight, still hurt like a mother &$#.  
She became aware of two other people in the room, and raised her head to look at them. One was a nerdy-looking bald guy, while the other one was a supermodel-thin woman with strange white hair. Both were wearing lab coats.  
Sailor Moon frowned. "Uh oh... have I been captured by the government?" She had heard theories before that if the Sailor Senshi were to ever be captured and held by federal forces, that they would likely be dissected in the hopes of allowing the creation of a new generation of magical super-soldiers. In which case it was imperative that she got herself a lawyer, as she was pretty sure there were laws against that sort of thing.  
"Ah, hello there!" Yoshi said, turning away from Yamiko. "No, no, we have nothing to do with the government. You may rest assured of that."  
Moon breathed a sigh of relief, and then rested her head back on the table she was bound to. "That's good! So, is this about those video rentals that I lost? I mean, I knew you guys were really aggressive with your return policy, but if you'd just called I could've sent you a check or something!"  
"Konta, you can't be serious," Yamiko finally said, stepping up to the examination table. "There has to be a better subject than her."  
Yoshi shrugged. "Probably. But I have Sailor Moon here and now; capturing Senshi isn't so easy that you can go ahead and get a new one if you don't like the one you've got."  
Sailor Moon continued talking, not really understanding what the two scientists were talking about. "I get it! You're stalkers, aren't you? Well, I'm very flattered and all, but these cuffs are starting to chafe, so could I just sign an autograph and go? Or you can even have a lock of my hair if you want! But not too much, since-"  
Without looking directly at his patient, Yoshi grabbed a breather mask and shoved it over the Senshi leader's mouth, filling her lungs with sedatives. In seconds, the Senshi of the Moon's eyelids closed, and she once again drifted into unconsciousness.

Yamiko clicked her tongue. "So we're going through with this... I still can't believe you wrote up those complete plans in a DAY."  
"I still can't believe you're pestering me about how quickly I move on with these things," Yoshi shot back. "You must understand, Dr. Nova, in MY labs things move at my pace. If progress is not being made, one must forge ahead faster."  
"Your actions are reckless," Yamiko said simply, crossing her arms over her chest. "I merely advise caution. FOR EXAMPLE, given our general allegiances, have you considered the ramifications of this project's success?"  
"If I said yes, would you stop bothering me?" The diminutive geneticist asked blithely, putting on a pair of disposable rubber gloves.  
"I'm just saying, perhaps it's not wise to do this to a likely enemy," Yamiko insisted, putting on her own gloves as she approached the table.  
"Nova, Nova, Nova," Yoshi chided. "What happened to that true scientist's spirit you used to have? That thirst for the unknown! To see the wonders of science given life!"  
"I'm afraid I suffer from an increasingly rare malady known as 'common sense,'" the doctor said irritably.  
"Oh. Well, in that case, I'm your superior, so shut up and do as I say."  
"As you wish, Professor," Yamiko said sarcastically, turning on several machines behind her. Above Sailor Moon, a mono-molecular powered scalpel tool dropped down on an articulated arm, and Yamiko gently grabbed the handle of the device and leveled it down to begin their work. "So where do we start?"  
"Where the poor lass needs the most work done," Yoshi said simply. "Her brain."

Core soldiers butchered: 12  
Cyborgs disposed of: 26  
Mk. III androids scrapped: 8  
Mk. II androids scrapped: 8  
Major objectives captured by bad guys: 2  
Black Sabre mecha destroyed: 2  
DAPC officers (one present, one former) lost forever: 2  
Dreamscape incarnations of rulers of long-ruined civilizations swatted: 1  
Youma wasted: 1  
Senshi captured, but not released within this chapter: 1  
Sidekicks in formal wear effectively disabled: 1  
Long flashback sequences that could have likely been done more effectively in a short descriptive paragraph: 1

End Chapter 1 


	2. Welcome to the Machine

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."  
- John Stewart Mill

"The only thing worse than someone who thinks there's nothing worth dying for is someone who thinks there's nothing worth killing for; cowards at least have their instincts as an excuse."  
- Asuka Takami

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. What was originally intended to be a unique and fun plot lead, where I provide clues to future events in the original story, has degraded into a something of a cruel joke. It's still fun for me, though.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, techniques or emphasis, 'thoughts', writing, (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 2  
Welcome to the Machine

"Pressure in bicep holding within acceptable parameters."  
"Good. Activate the hammerspace capacitor to reflux arc 2-7-3-3 and... what? Just spit it out. What is it?"  
"Well... I mean... 'hammerspace capacitor'? What kind of a name is that? For that matter, what is 'hammerspace' anyway?"  
"I **wanted** to call it a 'chip of holding', but if I recall correctly, YOU didn't like that name either."  
"Of course not! It's juvenile! At least 'hammerspace capacitor' sounds complex and meaningful!"  
"Well, that's its name. The patent has already been filled out and everything."  
"Patent? But you didn't invent it!"  
"Semantics. Besides, I would have invented it, if I hadn't found one first."

The voices continued to chatter away above her, coming in and out of focus in a haze of incoherent noise.  
Usagi would have had a headache, were she conscious enough to experience pain at that moment. However, that particular sense was far from her mind's grasp as she laid atop the surgical table, her body literally torn apart, and her organs strewn about as dozens of wires and hoses fed into the gaping wound in her torso.  
A dull, almost detached sense of tension came from somewhere in her body, but in her quasi-conscious state, she couldn't even make out where.

"Don't be silly! What I did technically wasn't even illegal! It's not my fault that Japan doesn't have legal solutions for salvaging alien... oh, drat. Has the bicep pressure increased again?"  
"Huh? Oh... yes. It's trying to heal the nerve damage. This... healing ability, whatever it is, is truly amazing. No biological system could possibly compensate for this level of trauma."  
"Yes, I know. Magic is very convenient like that. Could you hurry up and sever the nerve, please? And cut away that muscle tissue. It's growing back right in the way."

Usagi's state of mind continued to float between corporeal awareness and the subconscious, unable to attach any meaning to the words it managed to hear. Worse, what biological senses were still working and managing to get through the drug-induced haze were only confusing what limited cognitive resources were available to the girl.  
Sight was out completely; her eyes had been replaced by artificial orbs that had been connected to her optic nerves, but had not been activated. Pain had been dulled down to nothing, thanks to a combination of sedatives, nerve damage, and shock. Her spatial senses were the hardest for her hazy thoughts to wrap around, due to the constant destruction of sensory nerves and her body's constant regeneration of them. On top of that, her breathing, which she was still attempting to continue as is recommended for any human not trying to die, didn't seem to be working. Yet her lungs were, more or less, continuing to pump oxygen to what parts of her body weren't directly exposed to it. Very difficult for the brain to deal with.

_Snap!_ "Okay, it's in. Hand me the drill."  
"Here... but... do you think it's wise to place a plasma converter in the same place that you've placed the flamethrower fuel?"  
"Don't be ridiculous." _Vrrrrrr!_ "They share the same quantum space; how could one react with the other?" _Vrm! Vrm! Vrrrrrrrr!_  
"... Why don't you tell me?"  
_Vrrrrrm!_ "Okay! Done! Anyway, yes, I suppose if the hammerspace capacitor were to spontaneously fail somehow, and attempt a reflux at all given coordinates... yes, it could happen that the converter would ignite the fuel. However, I can assure you that that would be the **least** of anyone's problems if such a thing were to happen."

At the same time, on a plane of awareness entirely separate from Usagi's consciousness, subconsciousness, and the current haze that stuck her in-between, lines of code were being formed by the hundred as data poured into the new silicon formations implanted in Usagi's cerebral cortex. With the greater part of her neural network in the equivalent of a "safe" mode, the new computer's influence was limited, but already it was beginning to catalog the new appendages being installed in the greater body, and directed the nervous system in attaching nerve endings in the right mechanical receptors.  
Soon, she would be complete. The most powerful and sophisticated combination of human and machine ever constructed on Earth. It was only a matter of time, now...  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ami combed a lock of hair back behind her ear as she stood in front of the large police station that the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment used as their headquarters. It was a nervous habit of hers that had followed her through her pre-teen years, and didn't show any signs of stopping as she went through young adulthood.  
'I can't just barge in there and greet her like I know her! ... Can I? 'Hey, howzit going, you arrested me and my friends the other day while we were in the middle of a youma bust, and I thought I'd drop by! Remember me? I'm actually your long-lost cousin!' Ugh! Where's Usagi when you need her?'  
It was very odd that her princess hadn't shown up to join her on her way here, given that she had been so excited and insistent the day before, and Ami was rather miffed that her best friend and sometimes-leader had blown her off without a bit of notice.  
She still didn't know what had happened to the ponytailed girl, but given that Minako hadn't returned to the dorm room either, it was likely that the blondes simply hit another on-campus party somewhere. The fact that Usagi hadn't shown up in the morning led Ami to believe that either her princess had finally been pushed into drinking alcohol in earnest, or someone had spiked the punch again.  
'I don't know HOW many times Luna's warned her about drinking. All it takes is half a can of Asahi, and that girl can't even move in the morning.' Of course, Usagi usually had trouble moving in the morning regardless of her alcohol intake, but at least she was normally quiet about it. When Usagi had a hangover, however, she had to make sure that everybody had just as big a headache as she did.  
'Okay, enough of this!' Ami decided, her features hardening as she looked up the front stairs leading to the glass double-doors of the station. 'Just go in there and talk to her! There's nothing to be afraid of!'  
"Hhhheeeetk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk..." a monstrous, throaty clicking sound coming from off to her side quickly attracted her attention, and droplets of sweat began to gather over her head as Ami spotted the strange alien guard she had seen in the station before slowly sidling toward her. It let out a feral hiss as it stopped and bunched up its back legs, ready to pounce at a moment's notice.  
'Well, I guess there's that...' she thought, idly clutching her purse to her chest as her body seized up in mortal terror. There was no WAY she'd have enough time to transform before that thing was on top of her. 'But in a way, this is a good thing! Who can find time to worry about awkward social mishaps when she's moments away from being ripped apart and eaten by a killer alien? Speaking of which, now would be a great time to start screaming...'  
Just before she managed to take control of her lungs once more, a whistling sound came from within the station, causing the zergling to jerk his head toward the entrance.  
"Hunter! Where are you, big guy? Hunter?" Asuka pushed the front door of the HQ open as she searched for the wandering pet/mascot, and then noticed a vaguely familiar blue-haired woman standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking absolutely horrified. She considered this a good sign, as it meant that Hunter was probably close by.  
Her hypothesis was confirmed when she craned her neck to look over the edge of the concrete partition that set off the stairs from the parking lot. "Hunter! There you are! You know you're not supposed to be out here by yourself!"  
The zergling twisted his head around to glare directly at Asuka, and snapped angrily in her direction, before staring pointedly at Ami.  
"No! She's not food! Get up here!" The police captain chided sternly, doing absolutely nothing for the college girl's current state of abject fear.  
Hunter growled menacingly as he slowly crept up the concrete steps of the police station, his tail whipping from side to side as he passed Asuka and the door she held open.

Once the alien was inside, Asuka let the door close, and then addressed the pale young woman below. "Sorry about that. My name is-"  
"Moment please," Ami said rigidly, "life not done flashing before eyes... okay, I'm good." She stumbled backwards a bit, leaning forward and clutching her chest. 'Somehow they seem a lot bigger in real life than they did in Starcraft...'  
"Anyway, I'm Captain Asuka Takami of the DAPC. If there's something I can help you with, you should come inside."  
Ami twitched. "Uhm... isn't that... thing... inside? I mean, is that a **real** zergling?"  
The police captain shrugged. "Well, technically it's a 'devouring one', but yeah. Don't ask how we got it; we have no idea. But don't worry about Hunter. As long as you're nowhere near him, he's harmless."  
The part-time super heroine didn't move, and remained silent for a long moment while looking at Asuka expectantly. "You're not going to say 'just kidding', are you?"  
"No. You coming, or what?" Without waiting for a response, Asuka turned away and entered the police station, leaving Ami to dash after her.

Asuka sat down behind the main report desk, and logged into the computer as her guest timidly sat down in the office chair on the other side. "Okay... are you here to report an incident bearing investigation, to report a crime, or to file a damage complaint?"  
Ami blinked. "Uhm, none of those, actually. But tell me, your mother is Kyoko Takami, correct?"  
_Clack!_ Rather than answering, Asuka drew her pistol and slammed it sidelong onto the surface of the desk she was sitting at, her finger ready to squeeze the trigger. For the second time within five minutes, Ami felt her heart nearly stop, and her face paled.  
"I feel it's only fair to warn you," Asuka deadpanned, "that the majority of things you could possibly say after mentioning my relation to that name will lead to me shooting you dead right there in that seat." 'I've been working with Snake WAAAAAAAAAY too long...'  
Ami's hair stuck straight out on end, and she started to tremble involuntarily. Was this woman serious? "No! Wait! Don't shoot me! My name is Ami Mizuno!" While she was quite used to being in mortal danger as a result of her Senshi duties, it had been a long time since she had done any serious fighting, and coming so close to death so frequently and so unexpectedly while in a place that most people would consider a safe haven was quickly taking its toll on her psyche.  
The police captain frowned. "You say that like your name should mean something to me."  
"It should!" Ami shouted desperately, holding her hands up in a placating manner. "I'm your cousin! Chisato Mizuno's daughter! Please don't kill me!"  
"Chisato..." Asuka's eyes widened suddenly. "N-No way! Ami-chan? Is it really you!"  
"I have I.D. and everything!" Ami cried. "Just don't shoot!"

Quickly holstering her sidearm, Asuka rushed around her desk and happily wrapped the younger woman in a warm hug. "My God! I haven't seen you in forever! I can't believe it's really you!"  
The younger woman let out a deep breath of relief while being embraced; it seemed she had at last breached whatever diabolical barrier separated those guests who were to be welcomed and protected, and those guests who were apparently expendable.  
Asuka held out her cousin at arm's length to look her over. "I thought I'd seen you somewhere before! But we were literally just kids the last time we met! How's your mother?"  
Ami smiled. "She's divorced now, but she's fine. She's been working as a doctor at the same hospital since I can remember." Then her smile faded. "How's... um... your family?"  
Asuk'a smile also fell. "They're the same."  
"What about your brothers?"  
The older woman sighed, and pulled up a chair so that she could sit next to her newly discovered relative. "They... didn't turn out well."  
Ami nodded sadly. "I see. But look at you! You're a police officer now! I can't believe it!"  
The other bluette smirked. "Police CAPTAIN, honey. The rank's a mark of pride." Then she sighed. "I mean, I could have landed in a better department, but around here I'm the top brass."  
Ami blinked. For a woman to be the ranking officer in an entire department was certainly unusual, even in this day and age, but it wasn't a bad thing. "Wait, what do you mean you could have landed in a better department?"  
Asuka raised an eyebrow at her cousin. "Well... tell me, how did you find out about me being here?"  
Ami started bigsweating as she tried to recall the excuse she prepared. "I... uh... oh, right! I saw an article in the paper that mentioned you!"  
The police captain nodded. "I thought as much. What was the article about?"  
Ami tried to recall what the title was of the article she had gotten from Rei (who had collected quite a few in her studies of occult phenomenon). "I think it was... 'Radioactive Glue-Based Life-Form the Result of Failure in Bomb Defusal'." She stopped and thought about that sentence. "Oh. I see."  
"Right. It's a long story that would require divulging classified information to completely explain, but the short of it is, my subordinates are all either stupid, or crazy. Sometimes both."  
The younger woman frowned. "But... you do seem to carry out your missions... well... **efficiently**, right?"  
"Don't get me wrong; crazy can be a huge advantage in the field," Asuka admitted, "and thanks to the stupidity of my highest ranking subordinate, he was transformed into a superhuman war machine and released by an enemy that didn't know any better. My men all have their strengths, but it's always been kind of an ambition of mine to command a normal platoon of decent soldiers."  
"I... see." Actually once Ami thought about it, she could sympathize a bit with her cousin's position. Her own experiences with staving off the forces of supernatural evil were often complicated by the... quirks of her teammates, and most often their leader. Which wasn't to say that she would have ever traded them for straight, hardened soldiers had she the opportunity... but it would have helped.  
Asuka waved off that line of discussion as she got up, and then poured some tea from the drink station behind the main desk. "Enough about me, what have you been up to? Do you have a job yet?"  
"Oh, no, not yet. I'm in my second year at Himana University. I'm studying for a doctorate in medicine."  
"Ah, following in your mother's footsteps," Asuka smirked wryly. "It must be wonderful to have parents you can be proud of."  
Ami sweatdropped. "It's... nice. Yes. I'm not positive I'm going to be a doctor, though."  
The older woman blinked. "Really? Why wouldn't you want to be? Too much studying?"  
"No, that's not it at all," Ami pushed a lock of hair back behind her ear. "Well... I wanted to be a doctor when I was younger... you know, there was this whole 'allure of saving lives' thing when I was in high school. I guess it lost its glamor along the way, somehow." Of course, she knew precisely when it had lost its glamor. When one has saved the world through violence and seen people not just healed, but resurrected through a medium as ambiguous as magic, spending years of training to practice mundane medicine hardly seemed worth it, as it was sure to be nearly inconsequential compared to her secret life as a Senshi.  
"I can sympathize a bit," Asuka offered, sitting back down and handing her cousin a cup of tea. "I used to think medicine was incredible... and actually, I still do. But I find it more efficient and satisfying to save people's lives by taking others' away."  
Ami wanted to be shocked or horrified by that statement, she really did, but instead, she sighed and murmured, "I know what you mean."  
Asuka raised an eyebrow. "You do?"  
"Er, no!" Ami shouted suddenly, jerking to attention. "I mean, I can understand where you're coming from! I've never killed anyone! Honest!"  
"Oh-kay..." Asuka mumbled, sweatdropping.  
"Anyway, why don't you tell me more about what you do here?" Ami insisted, still trying to cover for her slip.  
The police captain took a sip of her tea. "Well, we work here to investigate and contain occult phenomenon, as well as reinforce local authorities when requested to do so. The way I like to put it is: we find what shouldn't exist, and make it stop existing."  
Ami nodded. "Is concealing the existence of the phenomenon a part of your job?"  
"Nah." Seeing her cousin's confused look, Asuka shrugged. "The people of Tokyo have been subjected to so many strange attacks throughout history that no public official is willing to spend the resources to cover anything up anymore. Nobody cares anymore. Besides, usually my department is so intent in killing our targets, that either there isn't enough left of the enemy to observe, or enough of the battlefield left for anybody to determine what happened, or the media decides that the extent of the damage we caused was more interesting than the enemy we were fighting."  
"What kinds of enemies **have** you fought?"  
Asuka sighed. "Mostly we have to fight a terrorist group called the Freedom's Angels, which uses a number of bio-genetically engineered weapons and cybernetically altered humans. Beyond that, we've fought with aliens, clones, demi-humans, mind-controlling parasites, a retrovirus that turns people into zombies, politicians, demons, mad scientists..." she idly tapped her head as she tried to think of more examples, and didn't notice Ami's disbelieving stare. "Let's see... recently we had to destroy a youma, and arrest the vigilante wierdoes who were fighting it."  
"W-Weirdoes?" Ami asked, frowning.  
"Yeah. A bunch of girls in stupid-looking cheerleading outfits throwing around magic," Asuka said off-handedly, unaware that Ami's eyebrow twitched in response to the jibe. "As far as vigilantes go, I really prefer dark, brooding religious gunmen."  
"You don't say," the younger woman said through clenched teeth. 'Don't get upset... there's nothing to get excited about... the outfits ARE a little silly... she's entitled to her opinion...'  
"Most recently though," Asuka continued, "we've had a new kind of enemy to deal with. In fact, we're still not certain what the enemy is."  
"... Say... where are the other officers?" Ami asked, suddenly realizing that the room was completely empty except for her and Asuka, and that they had been talking alone for some time.  
Asuka sighed. "They're on an investigation. Some others are on patrol. It's pretty much me and the geeks upstairs until Tekai gets back."  
The younger woman blinked. "On an investigation? What kind? What are they doing, exactly?"  
Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Do you REALLY wanna know?"  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_KWAA-BOOOM!_

Junko winced and covered her head as flame burst out the windows of the old apartment building with great force, blowing chunks of glass and concrete onto the streets below as the entire structure shook.  
Standing next to her and chuckling, Snake put away his detonator and started to dust off his hands smugly, ignorant or indifferent to the shouts of surprise and panic coming from the firefighters and normal police officers around him.  
"Lieutenant, was that REALLY necessary?" Junko asked wearily. She had a fair idea of how the conversation would go from here, but still felt obligated to go through the motions.  
"Of course it was! How do you suggest we deal with a zombie infestation?" Snake said condescendingly, as if it should have been obvious.  
The redhead massaged her head. "'Infestation'? There was only one zombie."  
"And where there's one, there's a hundred!" Snake reasoned.  
"We had searched the rest of the building top to bottom..."  
"Well, we had to be sure we got the one we found."  
"And we'd already destroyed the first one..."  
"We have no guarantee that shooting the living dead until only the lower torso remains effectively neutralizes them."  
"We actually had orders to take any zombies alive, or 'undead' as it were, for study..."  
"As the commanding officer, I deemed capture impossible at the time. What with my opening fire right away and throwing that napalm grenade as soon as I saw it."  
"And... where's Ranma?"  
Snake opened his mouth to come up with an excuse for that mishap, and then remained shock-still for a moment as nothing came to mind. "Oops."  
Both DA officers slowly turned toward the burning remains the building, which was starting to crumble apart from the combined effects of the bomb blasts and subsequent fire damage.  
"Wow. Assuming he survived that, he is gonna be **pissed**."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It's a minor operation to capture an undamaged zombie drone, that's all." Asuka said calmly, taking a sip from her tea. "It should be simple enough for them. Meaning they'll probably screw it up."  
'Minor operation to capture a zombie?' "Uh... they'll screw it up because it's simple?"  
The police captain nodded. "It's a bit of a curse. Any task given to my department that a normal man with a metal stick could handle, my men will fail to accomplish while annihilating a large stretch of land in the meantime. On the other hand, they'll show incredible valor and resilience and fight their way out of impossible odds and conquer nearly invincible enemies." She looked up for a moment, then frowned. "While annihilating a large stretch of land in the meantime. That part seems pretty much unavoidable."  
Ami chuckled nervously. "You don't seem to have much faith in your subordinates... don't you think it'd be better to be encouraging and support them?"  
"Tried that," Asuka mumbled, pausing to drink more tea. "Once I praised Saotome and Snake for destroying only half of an orphanage which had housed a rampaging demon hound or something. They misunderstood the word 'only', apparently, and immediately destroyed the rest of the building for me."  
The younger woman started to pale, and Asuka quickly added, "This was after the structure had been evacuated, of course! There was no one inside! But as you can imagine, a lot of people were very upset. Including me."  
Ami calmed herself, rationalizing that her initial disgust and outrage had been a result of the initial thought of destroying an orphanage. After all, the Senshi could hardly claim to have kept damage to minimum while combating evil. "Of course. Of course it was. So, what happened? They were punished, right?" Seeing her cousin nod, she requested further details. "So what was it? Suspension from duty? Or were they terminated?"  
"No, no, nothing like that," Asuka waved off the younger girl's naivette. "I just grabbed Snake's shotgun and beat them with it until it broke. By then they were crying louder than the orphans." She then took a long sip of tea.  
After several moments of silence, the police captain re-established eye contact with her cousin, only to see the younger woman staring at her with shock and horror in her eyes. "What!"  
"Y-You actually **beat** your subordinates?" Ami blurted, extremely alarmed.  
"I don't really have a choice, if I'm to maintain discipline," Asuka said defensively, nursing her tea. "We may be officially labeled as police officers, but our work is extremely militaristic in its execution. Normal cops can be cowed with things like demerits and suspensions; for the most part, these guys can't. And for me, it's far better for my peace of mind knowing that they're under my thumb than out on their own." She took a quick sip of tea. "So ultimately, sometimes I have to resort to 'drill sergeant' style discipline."  
"Does it work?" Ami asked numbly.  
"Of course it does. My men fear me more than they fear the undead, flesh-eating mutants, and huge, armored war machines. The only reason they destroyed the other half of that building was because they thought I wanted them to." Then she winked at her cousin. "My boys would die for me. But they don't, because they know that would piss me off."  
Despite how uncomfortable she was with the topic, Ami couldn't help but chuckle at that particular expression.

Asuka finished off her tea and put the cup down on her desk. "Well, since you show an interest in our work, would you like to know a little more about our latest case? It's turning into quite the occult mystery!"  
This perked Ami's interest. If nothing else, at least it would probably be a good tidbit to offer Rei. Even if the fire Senshi was still angry at the DAPC over being arrested, and had refused to come herself (which Ami considered a good thing. She didn't need her friend to be arrested in civilian form too, for lashing out at an officer commenting on the Senshi's stupid costumes), she still wanted to hear every scrap of information Ami could glean from the department and its activities in combating the paranormal.  
Getting up, the older woman beckoned Ami upstairs. "The last few weeks, we've had reports of zombie infestations all around Tokyo, and had to put them down one by one. Nothing that we haven't dealt with before."  
"The undead are the usual suspects to you, huh?" Ami asked, genuinely curious.  
"Not true undead, no." Seeing her cousin's confused expression, Asuka smirked. "The zombies we've fought in the past have always been normal corpses contaminated by a powerful mutagen and biochemical agent called the T-virus. The T-virus reactivates primal nerve clusters in the dead brain, and feeds on decaying cells, reproducing and eventually restoring limited function to an entire nerve complex and musculature. What you get then isn't really a revived body, but a virus animating a corpse. The T-virus is, naturally, lethal to living beings, as it has a tendency to cause rapid mutation in living cells far beyond the body's capacity to survive and adapt."  
Ami frowned. "Not a 'revived body, but a virus animating a corpse'? What's the difference?"  
Asuka shrugged. "It didn't seem like a meaningful distinction to me, either. Until recently." The police captain led her cousin through a hallway on the second floor. "You see, T-virus zombies are carnal, instinctive, slow, and incapable of following commands. They seem to have a limited ability to tell other T-virus zombies from living creatures, but if they have no convenient victims, it's quite common for them to start gnawing on each other. They're also usually created - at least, in all the cases we've had dealing with them - from either direct injection, wounds from other infected zombies, or a classification of mutant bio-weapon we've dubbed a 'creep'." Pausing briefly in her explanation, Asuka stopped in front of a set of steel blast doors, and removed a key card from her pocket.  
"Usually, it starts with the deployment of a creep. It's capable of killing dozens of humans per hour, and each one of the dead will rise as an infected zombie." After swiping the card through a nearby magnetic slot, a green light turned on above the blast doors, and they slowly began to open.  
"As you can imagine, zombie infestations can become a serious problem in this way, growing exponentially and indiscriminately. Luckily, the appearance of creeps is relatively rare, as they're nearly as dangerous to the enemy that uses them as they are to us. Even terrorists recognize the use of the T-virus as reckless and extreme."  
Ami shuddered. All of this talk was starting to get to her. She may have been used to fighting magical monsters, but slaying the walking dead was an experience she didn't want to have to deal with on this side of a computer monitor. "So what is it about these zombie infestations that make them different?"  
Asuka led Ami into the disinfectant chamber as she talked, and the blast doors slowly closed behind them. "These new zombies, besides containing a total number of **zero** T-virus organisms, operate differently. For one thing, while these new hordes do appear to take in new victims and grow over time, it's at a relatively slow and careful pace. The zombies seem slightly competent, never attack each other, and act as if they're being directed into performing simple tactics, like ambushes and coordinated swarming. Some of them use weapons."  
Then the police captain glanced at Ami, and fixed her eyes on her cousin's as a light mist seeped into the cell. "But most telling of all is: they're hiding. The zombies take victims only when it seems like they can get away with it. They stay in small, enclosed spaces rather than wandering about at random. They don't want to be found... or at least, whatever controls them doesn't want to be found. Every case in which we eliminated one of these new infestations, the report of its existence came from either a victim who got lucky and escaped, or a report of a police officer who had been investigating a missing persons report, and himself had gone missing. No witnesses, no lucky sightings, no rumors."  
_Hssssssss..._ The sterilizing spray finished its job as it cleansed the two women nearly to the last bacterium, and there was a sudden rumbling noise as overhead fans quickly sucked the mist out of the small, enclosed area.  
"This is... fascinating," Ami admitted, completely entranced. She was also thoroughly creeped out, sure, but she just HAD to know where this was going.  
"Further analysis of... well, of what was left of the zombies revealed other interesting facts, and we began to do some research into common lore and myths to try and make an educated guess at how to fight these things. So far, we're thinking-"  
At that moment, the armored doors leading to the containment lab opened swiftly, and Ami's eyes widened as a figure in a bloody lab coat suddenly stumbled forward into the sterilization cell, arms clawing wildly about while groaning harshly.  
"AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Asuka winced as Ami's scream pounded her eardrum, and without missing a beat, she kicked Seras firmly in the shin.  
Ami, who had instinctively clamped onto her cousin's waist in fright, watched, absolutely stupefied, as the "zombie" jerked back from the attack and began to hop around on one foot, holding its injured leg in pain.  
"Tuko, for the love of Buddha KNOCK IT OFF. That's the fourth time you've pulled that joke. One would think that you'd learned your lesson after Snake tried to shoot you in the head the first time!"  
The perpetually drunk medical officer tenderly rubbed his shin as he chuckled nervously. "Aw, c'mon! Do you have any idea how boring it is to be locked up in this room for twelve hours with a bunch of twitching upper torsos and Yamma?"  
Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Do you know how stressful it is trying to keep order in a police department full of juvenile delinquents who parade around as armed enforcers of the peace?"  
Seras was silent for a long moment, then his eyes narrowed. "You win this round, Trebeck!"  
By this time, Ami had finally regained control of her breathing, and stopped clutching Asuka. "What were you thinking? You nearly gave me a heart attack!"  
"I wish I did give you a heart attack," Seras mumbled as he took a quick sip of scotch, not noticing when Ami's eyes widened in shock (whether it was because of what he said or how he produced a large bottle of liquor seemingly out of nowhere may never be known), "then I'd get to work on a living person instead of zombies."  
"Just shut up and get out of the way," Asuka snapped, shoving the inebriated scientist aside. "I'm tired of your whining about having to dissect monsters!"  
"I don't ask much!" Seras protested. "I'm a doctor! I'm not supposed to have to work with dead things! It's just not kosher!"  
Taking a gestural cue from Asuka to ignore the man, Ami stepped into the containment lab and took a quick look around. It looked a lot like a picture she once saw of a military surgery tent; there were several beds, each of them isolated from the rest and hidden from view with a large plastic curtain that hung on rails attached to the ceiling.  
The college student shuddered involuntarily as she heard some scattered groaning from around the room. Three of the beds in the room seemed to be occupied by live creatures, judging from the twitching and shifting shadows from behind the curtains.  
'Well, maybe not **live** creatures...' She cringed a bit as she noticed the pools of blood on the floor beneath some of the metal examination beds. This reminded her way too much of Doom 3, and in the back of her mind she sorely wished that she had a computer mouse to hold on to for comfort.

As she followed Asuka to a bed in the middle of the lab, a man emerged from a split in the curtains, this time without the pretense of being a brainless flesh beast. He was tall and thin, with very dark skin and facial features that seemed to convey a sense of gloominess and dark brooding, even though the man was clearly quite satisfied at the moment. He also wore a lab coat that used to be white, but was now stained a deep brownish-red as a result of his recent work.  
"Ami, this is... uh... this is Yamama... or is it Gamma?" Asuka sweatdropped as she scratched her head.  
The lanky assistant twitched. "Yamma. Yamma Gordon. It's not THAT hard to remember, is it?"  
"Sure, whatever," Asuka said dismissively, turning back to her cousin. "Anyway, this is Yamma Gordon, and the idiot who pounced on us in the elevator was Seras Tuko. Tuko is the chief medical officer around here, as well as our bio-genetics and metaphysical energy expert. At least, when he isn't too sloshed to understand complete sentences. Nambla London here is his assistant, and the foremost expert on dead people."  
Yamma twitched again. "You were closer the first time."  
"Closer to what?" the police captain asked, blinking.  
Ami decided to interrupt the awkward exchange, and hopefully learn a little more about what was going on. "So, is he a forensics expert?"  
"Retired undertaker," Asuka said immediately, smirking as Ami nearly fell over.  
"Hmph. Experience is experience," Yamma protested grumpily. "If you don't need a PhD to bury dead bodies, I don't see why you should need one to poke at them a little first."  
"And that's PRECISELY the kind of attitude that seems to prevail around here," Asuka said bitterly, snatching a bottle of rum from an adjacent table. "'We don't need brains, we have experience!' Pfeh!" Asuka took a quick swig of the drink, causing an ever-growing sense of alarm in her already-disturbed younger cousin.  
"With all due respect, Captain, our guys HAVE proven time and time again that experience does count for more than good training. Well, experience and remote bombs." Seras stumbled up beside the two bluettes, confirming that his earlier lurching movements were a result of his drunken state, rather than him trying to act the part of a zombie. "Also, that's my drink."  
"You have a bloody distillery upstairs, and you complain about me grabbing a bottle? Who exactly do you think is supposed to be responsible for getting rid of that stuff, and yet lets you get away with it, numbskull?" Asuka snapped.

Ami slowly distanced herself from her cousin, seeing that the older woman was becoming increasingly irritated. "So... I heard these... zombie... specimens... are special?" She asked Yamma uncertainly, hoping that Asuka hadn't irritated the quasi-scientist too badly.  
Yamma smiled faintly. "Naw, most of them aren't anything special. Total lack of T-virus contamination, sure, and strangely enough, their heart seems to be beating faintly, even creating a bit of a pulse, which is obviously strange for dead people, but they're your standard zombie stock. They lie around all day, groaning and writhing about and trying to bite whatever comes close." He gestured to the two other table setups in the lab that held animate specimens. "What's left of them shows evidence of zombie bites, so it's also fairly obvious how they ended up like this."  
Then the lanky man jabbed a thumb behind him at the bed he had been observing. "This guy's a little different, though. Not in how he acts, but in how he was wounded." And then, without giving nearly enough warning about what she was about to see, the former undertaker swept the curtain to the side.  
Ami blanched, and suppressed a sudden disturbance in her stomach. The zombie that was firmly bound to the examination table by steel restraints was little more than an upper torso, with one arm gone at the bicep and its head cut open and held firmly for the purpose of examination. The skin was pale, and purple veins were unusually visible along the entire body. Blood and shredded flesh covered the table and the adjacent floor, and she could see the immobilized monster grasp and writhe within its bonds in a constant, grotesque bid for freedom.  
Yamma missed her reaction, as he was wont to do, and walked over behind the zombie's head excitedly. "Look at this, see? See this wound?"  
"W... Which one?" Ami mumbled weakly, willing herself to observe more closely. As both a Senshi and a medical student, she would not allow herself to flee before the sight of a dead body... even if that dead body happened to be moving at the time.  
"Well, not the missing limbs, obviously," Yamma said condescendingly. "Though I really hope the guys get a complete specimen soon. All the animate bodies we have to study are only still moving because of Tiro's poor marksmanship. Well, except this one."  
Ami blinked. "What happened to this one?"  
"Snake's chainsaw ran out of fuel before he was done."  
Ami stared for a moment, then shook her head wearily. 'I'm just a little dizzy from being constantly scared out of my mind,' she told herself. 'I'm hearing things. I'm getting confused. People don't really kill monsters with chainsaws. That only happens in video games. Get a grip, woman!'  
"Anyway," Yamma continued. "This is the only specimen which shows a 'clean' wound, rather than having been chewed up by other zombies. Check it out." He pointed toward the neck, apparently unconcerned that the writhing corpse began to gnash its teeth and jerk its head violently as his arm neared its mouth. "Two clean puncture wounds, with smaller, rougher teeth marks all around it. See?"  
Though she didn't dare get any closer to the firmly restrained zombie, Ami managed to settle her nausea well enough to focus directly on the neck wound. "You're right... I mean, assuming this is the result of a bite as you say, whatever bit him had unusually large canines." She looked up at the lab assistant. "Did a wild animal do this?"  
"A wild animal didn't make this corpse rise and attack people," Asuka suddenly said from behind Ami, causing the younger girl's heart to skip a beat in surprise (her nerves didn't show any signs of settling so long as she was surrounded by the living dead).

Turning to face her cousin, Ami saw that Asuka had apparently won her argument with Seras, judging from both the fact that she was in uncontested possession of the liquor bottle, and the fact that Seras was once again massaging a bruise on his leg.  
"Do you have any leads?" Ami asked, slightly surprising herself at how eager she sounded. Granted, this was a fascinating topic, and Asuka wouldn't have led her up here just to look at all the blood unless there was more to the story, but most people who knew Ami would have assumed that such a scenario would be too morbid for her maintain an interest.  
"Vampires," Asuka said simply, taking another swig from the bottle.  
By the time she lowered it again, Ami was staring at her with an expression half-way between excitement and disbelief. Obviously the girl was the type to be skeptical of old myths and legends, but the reality of being surrounded by zombies had significantly weakened that skepticism.  
"Keep in mind that our 'investigations' often involve researching common lore and myth and checking for similarities, but these latest batches of zombies match some of the descriptions of vampires from Western legend. Specifically, they're 'ghouls'; vampiric victims that become shambling, brainless servants under the direct control of the vampire."  
Ami raised an eyebrow. "I thought people bitten by vampires became vampires."  
Asuka just shrugged. "There's some conflicting tales of how it works. Some stories say only strong-willed people can defy death and become a vampire with free will. Others say the vampire itself chooses which of its victims will become vampires themselves. And one of the more popular theories is that only virgins become vampires, while 'defiled' humans become ghouls. However it happens, it seems that vampires are rarer than the ghouls, which can only be a good thing."  
"But you have no conclusive evidence?" The younger woman asked cautiously. "I mean, do you even know how to fight a vampire if you encounter one?"  
"Well, we find that when all else fails, we can always-" _Beep! Beep! Beep!_  
Asuka looked startled as a fairly loud beeping noise erupted from her jacket, and quickly took out the cellular phone within. "Sorry. Excuse me for a sec."

_Click! "Captain? Are you there?"_  
"This is Takami. What's up?" Asuka asked neutrally, preparing herself for the worst. It sounded like Junko on the other end, and she doubted that Junko would be calling her simply to report a job well done. That was Snake's job as the ranking officer, and he wouldn't have called her ahead of time rather than simply reporting back at HQ.  
_"Oh! Good! I was trying to reach you on the main line, but nobody at HQ picked up!"_  
"I'm busy upstairs right now, and Tekai is on patrol with Yamazaki. What's wrong?"  
_"Well... uh... first off, we completed the mission! The enemy was confirmed to be a single zombie, true undead, with no vamp infestations present. The enemy was completely destroyed."_  
Asuka frowned. 'I hate being right all the time.' "Capturing the enemy target proved impossible?"  
_"... It's a gray area."_  
A vein popped up on Asuka's head. "Of course. I assume there's some other reason you're calling me?"  
_"Uh, yes. We also have two wounded."_  
Asuka's eyes widened. There had only been two people assigned to the investigation other than Junko. "Ranma and Snake were BOTH hurt? What happened? How serious is it?" Besides the various indications of wounds from the undead tending to create more undead, the prospect of an enemy force that could defeat both the DA's star weapons expert and star martial arts expert was extremely unsettling.  
_"Well... it's hard to say how serious it is... Snake's actually not done being wounded yet. As for Ranma, it couldn't be too bad if he still had the energy left to assault Snake after surviving the explosion."_  
Asuka wanted to facefault. She wanted to sweatdrop. She wanted to slap her forehead. But no matter how desperately she wanted to make a comedic reference as to the irony of the situation, she had to allow that there was absolutely no excuse to not have expected this.  
"I... see. Was that all?" The police captain asked despondently.  
_"Well... it's just-oh! Looks like Ranma's done. Um... Snake doesn't look like he's been crippled, and he's not bleeding badly. I don't think we'll need an ambulance or anything."_  
"Was that ALL, Chikiko?" Asuka growled, showing her impatience.  
_"N-No. We, and by we, I mean Snake, blew up the apartment building we were searching. And the flames sorta spread faster than we expected. So there are a few scattered fires here among the apartments, though the area was evacuated and there are no civilian injuries reported. So... yeah... just FYI!"_  
_Beep!_ Asuka nearly cracked the plastic casing of her cell phone with the force with which she pressed the "End" button, and immediately scrubbed her hair with her hand. "God damn it. WHY can't they complete a simple mission without destroying a building?"  
Seras, who was too drunk to identify an obviously rhetorical question, thought about it for a moment. "Well, when you think about it, it has to be your fault for promoting a violent lunatic and a complete moron to-OW! OW! NO! Stop hitting me!"  
Ami winced at the sight of her cousin start to swat the inebriated man in the head repeatedly. "Asuka, hold on! Just calm down! What's wrong?" 'Yeesh, she's worse than Rei!'  
Asuka kicked the protesting medical officer to the side, then snarled disgustedly before taking a long sip of booze. _Gulp!_ "Ugh! It's just some damage reports and injuries. Everyday stuff around here." The police captain noticed the younger woman frowning at the bottle she held, and then held it up in offering, misinterpretting the look. "Sorry, did you want some?"  
Ami's frown twitched. "No thanks... I don't drink."  
"Neither did I, until I started working here," Asuka spat, swirling the liquor about in the bottle. "This stuff is great for calming nerves... you sure you don't want any? I know we gave you a good scare before."  
The younger woman shook her head firmly. "No, I don't think-"  
"OH MY GOD, IT'S FREE! YAMMA! IT GOT YAMMA! SWEET MOTHER OF BED AND BREAKFAST, WHY!"  
_Glomp!_ Asuka sweatdropped as Ami jumped onto her in terror, clinging to her cousin's waist with a grip that could have choked the life out of a lesser woman.  
Over next to the examination area, Seras tried unsuccessfully to stifle a chuckle as he saw the results of his ruse. "_Snort!_ Ha! I can't believe you _Snicker!_ fell for that even after the zombie joke! Wa ha ha ha ha!"  
Asuka remained silent for a moment, then tapped Ami's back (she still hadn't recovered from the shock, and was still clutching Asuka around her waist) with the liquor bottle. "Here. Finish this off, and I'll use the empty bottle to strike him repeatedly."  
Ami twitched. "I'm... opposed to both drinking and unnecessary violence," she said somewhat mechanically.  
The police captain raised an eyebrow. "You don't sound like you really mean that."  
Ami looked up at her cousin. Then she looked at the bottle being dangled next to her head. Then, still trembling slightly, she let go of Asuka and slowly took the bottle up in her hands.

Seras sweatdropped as he noticed Yamma stealthily moving away to one of the other examination beds further away.  
"Uh oh..."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Chung-chung-chung-chung-CHNK!_  
Igov smiled lightly as he turned away from the main assembly line, pleased with the factory's smooth progress.  
All around the narrow catwalk that spanned the length of the factory, giant metal claws hauled huge pieces of metal and machinery along ceiling mounted tracks, stopping every few feet to allow dozens of articulated arms to reach out with spanners and torches, making the war machines one step closer to completion in a shower of sparks and a smoky hiss.  
Crawling along at a more constant pace below him, a much longer, but smaller assembly line slowly pieced together the Mark II and III battle androids, with each piece being placed among the others with great care and precision, in stark contrast to the rough, clumsy efficiency that took place above.  
The entire factory boomed with the sounds of industry, a symphony of whines and hisses and shrieks that greatly pleased the largely artificial ear of the cyborg general.

"Everything is as should be," the Russian mumbled to himself. Deeming his brief inspection of his factory complete, Igov proceeded across the catwalk toward the entrance to the armor lab... and his new weapons. The heist to steal the alien technology had been quite successful, and even if Yoshi had managed to scamper in under his notice and make off with some of the loot, Igov was quite pleased with what he found among the shattered remains of a once proud and hopeful alien colonization force.  
As he neared the exit to the factory, one of the few humans to be allowed in this area, a terrorist who had been designated a technician, climbed up the ladder to the catwalk and stopped in front of Igov.  
"General Yuchtzky, sir! I have a report I was told to give you!" The man held out a piece of paper, looking fairly nervous. Igov recognized it as the expression of one who had to give bad news to a superior, but wasn't likely to be shot for being the messenger. Unlike several of the other characters that the Freedom's Angels tended to attract, Igov was not known for harming subordinates for informing him of critical problems and failures.  
The Russian general frowned as he took the report, noting in the back of his mind that he wouldn't be given anything out of the blue like this if it was merely a status report or inquiry.  
His suspicions were confirmed as he read the title. "'Report of resource acquisition'?"  
A vein popped up on Igov's head as he continued reading downward, and the engineer that handed him the report sweatdropped as a sudden popping noise was followed by a burst of steam from the collar of the general's trench coat.  
"Professor Konta 'acquisition' two dozen unit with no permission! How this happen?" The general growled, crushing the report in his hand.  
The engineer gulped. Even if he was in no danger of being punished, Igov was still scary when he was mad. "We... uh... we don't know, General. As you know, your cyborgs were in charge of security and normal operations, and there's no sign of tampering or damage amongst them. But today we showed up to take stock of our production, and the units were gone, with an 'I.O.U.' note left in the middle of the lab."  
Igov trembled in rage, and his free hand clutched the railing of the catwalk, which promptly twisted and snapped within his grip as if it was tinfoil. "Where Konta? Take units back!"  
"W-We don't know! Professor Konta only works on the most top-secret, high-level programs now! Nobody around here knows where he is! And if we crossed him, he could dispose of us without a peep from his superiors! There's nothing we can do!"  
Igov's organic eye twitched, and the man shrunk back, no longer certain that he wouldn't be creamed for being the messenger.  
"Understood," the general mumbled, producing a relieved sigh from the engineer. "Igov will deal with matter personally. For now, all personnel focus on research and repair alien weapon module, shield generator, and new chronosphere."  
The engineer blinked. "Uh... alien weapon module? I'm guessing you didn't read the part at the bottom of the report? The part where it lists the specific units taken?"  
"..." _Psssht!_ Another burst of steam from the cyborg's collar, coupled with the railing on the other side of the catwalk being crushed like a Pixie Stik, told the engineer that he had pushed his faith in Igov's rationality quite far enough.  
"Oh! Look at the time! I should be doing regularly scheduled maintenance! DON'T KILL ME!" Without waiting for any response from the cyborg, he flung himself off the catwalk and dropped to the metal floor below, gladly accepting the temporary injuries from the fall over the completely fatal strike Igov could implement with a simple backhand.  
His face still contorted in rage, Igov looked up toward the ceiling. "KOOOOOOOOOOOONTAAAAAAAAA!"  
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As Ami slowly stumbled through the dormitory halls as she made her way back to the room she shared with Minako and Usagi, she was feeling rather unsure as to whether she wanted to share her story about meeting her cousin or not.  
Her friends and fellow Senshi seemed quite interested in her meeting her long-lost family member, but the actual meeting had been nothing like Ami had imagined, and she was still feeling buzzed from the rum.  
She had only tried alcohol once before, and the situation had spun out of control so fast that it was still a tale of some popularity around the college a year later. This time it had been very different though; her intake had been limited, and instead of being too inebriated to remember what had happened afterward, she simply felt pleasantly light-headed, which was a welcome feeling after having her heart leap into her throat no less than four times within an hour. It had also made the sight of a grown man being pummeled with a hunk of glass far more amusing than it would have been otherwise for the mild-mannered girl.  
Shaking her head, Ami forced herself to stand straight and move more rigidly. She had lectured the others quite frequently on the dangers of drinking, and it would not do to show any indication of hypocrisy to them.

"Usagi-chan? Are you back yet?" Ami called as she entered the room, only to stop short at the sight before her.  
Minako sat on her bed, her head down as she pressed a cloth over her mouth and nose. Her eyes were clouded with tears, and the deformities in her makeup indicated that she had been sobbing for some time. Ami sobered immediately, feeling her buzz vanish as an overwhelming sense of dread settled within her.  
"Mina-chan! Oh my God! What's wrong?" Ami gasped and quickly dashed over to her friend, who jerked her head up in surprise at seeing the bluette enter.  
"A-Ami... I..." Minako tried to speak, but suddenly began to choke on her tears once more, and lowered her head as she smothered her face with the washcloth. "Why? _Sob!_ Why did this have to happen?"  
Ami grasped the blonde by the shoulders and then got on her knees so that she could look into Minako's eyes. "Mina-chan, please, calm down! Tell me what happened!"  
Mentally, Ami started running through all the things that could have left one of her most cheerful friends in such a horrible state. A cheating boyfriend, perhaps? Not likely, as Minako rarely invested her energy in actual relationships instead of short flings nowadays.  
That thought opened up several new possibilities within Ami's mind. Minako frequently attended parties that encouraged moral depravity, and had a high percentage of drunk, horny men. 'Uh oh...'  
Ami shuddered as Minako's crying slowed to a more coherent pace. Probably best to wait for the answer rather than jump down that line of conclusions.  
"It's just... it's too late now..." Minako blubbered, turning her head away slightly so that she didn't hold eye contact with Ami. "Usagi... there's nothing I can do now..."  
New alarms began going off in Ami's mind. "Usagi? Something happened to Usagi! What is it? What's going on?"  
Then, suddenly, Minako stared right into Ami's eyes, and grabbed her arms, as if afraid that the bluette would try to run away from her.  
"Ami-chan... I'm pregnant with Mamoru's child!"

Despite the pregnant pause (pun intended) that followed Minako's declaration, Ami's mind was by no means stunned into inactivity like her mouth.  
After the initial shock from the revelation, which was not unlike a brick being thrown through a glass window that represented the sense of order and reason of her life as she knew it, Ami pushed the entirety of her formidable brain power toward coming up with an appropriate response to encompass her confusion, disappointment, fear, outrage, and embarrassment.  
"Say whaaaa?" the bluette mumbled, suddenly feeling slightly dizzy. It felt sort of like the alcohol buzz she had enjoyed earlier, but far, far less comforting.  
"We were both drunk and didn't think anything of it at the time," Minako choked out between trembling breaths, "we even used a condom! But... it... it just... came off, I guess, and... I..." She let out another sob. "What am I gonna do? How can I face Usagi?"  
Ami twitched. Her heart was racing again, and her entire body was feeling a bit weak. 'Damn it! Why am I the one to get slammed with this? I'm not supposed to be the friend that everyone confides in and talks to for emotional support! I'm the friend that fixes dropped laptops and hooks up new broadband routers! Where the hell is Usagi when you... oh, right...'  
"All right... let's just... t-take it easy for now," Ami said placatingly, noting that Minako's pitiful expression of regret and self-loathing had been replaced by a desperate and manic one. "There's... uh... there's no need for Usagi to know, right? You're sorry it happened, and don't want anything to do with Mamoru ultimately, right?"  
"Yes! Yes!" Minako cried hopefully. "He doesn't even know about it yet!"  
"Th-Then we can just... pass it off as being some stranger's baby! Mamoru won't even know about it; as far as he's concerned, you used protection." Ami concluded, feeling slightly sickened by this turn of events.  
Minako nodded slowly. "But won't the guilt slowly gnaw away at me until I finally confess the truth, ultimately making the damage a dozen times worse?"  
Ami twitched again. "Hey, these kinds of issues are **not** my strong suit! Do you want my help or not!"  
Wincing, the blonde girl nodded desperately. "Thank you so much Ami! I love you!" Before the other girl could try to extract herself from the area, Minako quickly snatched her up in a hug, squeezing the blue-haired girl tightly as she sniffled.  
"Aaaaaaaand... Cut!"

Ami blinked as Makoto's voice came from behind her, and whirled around to see the ponytailed girl emerge from the closet across from Minako's bed, holding a video camera.  
"Nice! That was perfect!" Makoto said cheerfully, giving Minako a thumbs-up.  
"Thanks," the blonde answered, letting go of Ami to rub her face thoroughly with her washcloth. "I'm really tired now, though. It's exhausting to keep up the tears for that long."  
The taller woman grinned. "Hey, don't sweat it. You were great. This is sure to be a hit!"  
It was about this time that Minako and Makoto noticed that Ami seemed to be unusually tense, and actually getting tenser. Her face, which had been quite pale a moment ago, was flushed red, and her hands kept clenching and unclenching at her sides.  
"What. Is. This?" The bluette asked, her left eye twitching.  
Minako stifled a giggle. "Oops. You totally believed all that, didn't you? I'm sorry; it was all just for a tape I'm making."  
"A TAPE!" Ami shouted, clenching her teeth. "You nearly gave me a heart attack! I thought you were serious! And this was all just some sick joke!"  
Minako raised an eyebrow, wondering why Ami was so enraged. Sure, what she had gone through wasn't nice in any respect, but it wasn't like her to get so angry. "No, not a joke. It's for my drama class. We would have just asked you to play the part... but... well..." Minako looked embarrassed for a moment, then just spit it out. "You really can't act worth beans. And since Mako-chan is in a different part of the video as a different character..."  
Makoto smirked, and tapped the video camera. "We decided to see if we could trick you into acting realistic. And what an **interesting** result! 'Hide the baby, Usagi doesn't have to know,' huh?"  
"GIVE ME THAT TAPE!" The part-time Senshi of Mercury snarled, suddenly lunging at Makoto and tackling the taller girl to the ground.

Minako sweatdropped as she watched the Makoto, caught completely off-guard, try and wrestle a surprisingly determined and vicious Ami away from the camcorder, which she managed to hold just out of Ami's reach.  
"Wow. I guess Uncle Tom's paying Ami-chan a visit today, huh?"  
Luna poked her head out from under Minako's bed, which is where she had been hiding out of sight of the camera while they were recording. "It's 'Aunt Flo', not 'Uncle Tom'. And I think it's more likely she's just had a bad day."  
"A bad day?" Minako said skeptically. "But didn't she spend the day visiting her long-lost cousin? I thought she'd be happy."  
"Maybe it wasn't a joyful reunion," Luna guessed, jumping onto the blonde's lap to get a better view of the fight.

"Would you just-OW!-calm down? What's wrong with-Oof!-you? Stop it! OW! Keep your elbows off of my boobs!" Makoto complained, trying to push away on Ami's forehead with one arm while using the other to keep the video camera in the air just out of the smaller girl's reach.  
"Give me that tape! Hand it over, or help me God, I'll give your computer a virus so bad YOU'LL be in bed for a week!" Ami really was trying to get the camcorder without touching anything "sensitive", but she had nearly been pushed to the brink of her sanity today, and just KNEW that her friends wouldn't hesitate to humiliate their high-and-mighty team genius for a few giggles. Besides, Makoto was one of the most well-endowed women she knew; and with how tall she was, it was hardly feasible for a much shorter girl like Ami to reach the end of her arm without the use of "handholds".  
"OW! OW! Stop that! Those were NOT made for climbing! Okay! I give! Uncle!"

Minako bit her lip as she watched Ami jump up and down on her video tape repeatedly, trying to think of a relativley non-volatile topic to try and ease the resident genius into the subject of having destroyed a vital part of her studies.  
"So... uh... how was your cousin? Did you have a good time?" The blonde asked cheerfully, inwardly marveling at the numerous uses for keen acting skills.  
"Not really, no," Ami said irritably, kicking the remains of the cassette across the floor. "It was fascinating, exciting, surprising, and... educational. But not very enjoyable."  
"Really? What happened?" Makoto asked worriedly, idly massaging her abused bosom as she squeezed Ami's shoulder with her other hand. "Did your cousin not want to talk to you or something?"  
Ami shook her head, though she was hardly placated by the sudden concern. "No, Asuka and I talked a lot. And she's doing fine. She was happy to see me again. But..." she shuddered suddenly. "Let's just say that the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment is a scary place. And they deal with scary things."  
Makoto raised an eyebrow. "So? We deal with scary things."  
"No, not really," Ami deadpanned. "We deal with dangerous things. The only thing scary about our enemies is that they want to kill us, and they have the power to do so. The DA officers deal with SCARY things."  
Minako stared at the blue-haired girl blankly. "I don't follow."  
Ami sighed, then took a moment to think up a response. "Okay, it's like this: as Sailor Venus, you have enough power to blow up a small building, right?"  
The blonde girl nodded.  
"Right. And yet, you remember what happened when Shiori showed you her pet tarantula?"  
Minako's eyes went slightly blank, and she began shivering as her entire body went stiff.  
Makoto sweatdropped as she watched the blonde hug her legs to her chest, whimpering. "Ah. I see."  
"It's really amazing what those people go through with only a gun and a flak vest," Ami muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.  
"Big spiders?" Luna asked skeptically, not noticing when Minako flinched.  
"The **living dead**," Ami shot back, obviously still irritated. "And don't even tell me they were just making it up. I just want to forget everything that happened there besides drinking tea with my cousin."  
"Wow," Makoto was both impressed and not a little worried about how fully Ami had been affected by her experience that day. "If YOU were that scared, I'll bet Usagi was bawling the whole time!"  
Ami had been moving toward the kitchen when Makoto finished speaking, and stopped short. "Wait, what? Usagi wasn't with me."  
"She wasn't? But I thought she wanted to go," Luna asked, frowning as best as cat could manage.  
"She did. But I haven't seen her since yesterday morning. I had assumed Minako had taken her out or something."  
Minako managed to push thoughts of large, hairy arachnids out of her mind, and looked worriedly at her friends. "I spent the night in Mako-chan's room; we were studying for that psyche test next week. The last time I saw Usagi was the same time you did."  
Ami frowned deeply. "Well, then where could she have gone without telling any of us? She never goes ANYWHERE by herself."  
"Did anybody try calling her?"  
Luna shook her head. "Her cell is on her desk, see? Although she usually only leaves it behind when she leaves for class."  
The three girls and the cat all took a moment to think in silence, each one pondering where their leader could be.  
Suddenly, Makoto raised an eyebrow. "You know... there is one thing she does without any of us around..."  
The others looked at her expectantly, and the brunette grinned.  
Instead of speaking further, Makoto snatched up Minako's blanket and wrapped it over her shoulders, and then grabbed a red rose from the flower pot that Usagi kept on top of the book case. Then she held the rose in the air while keeping one end of the blanket clasped around her neck, like a cape.  
"Fear not, Sailors!" Makoto said in a deep, masculine-sounding voice, "For I am here to shout cheesy, effeminate encouragements safely out of the line of fire after distracting the enemy with pretty flowers!"  
Minako had to fight a chuckle at the taller girl's antics. It had always been a slightly sore point with Makoto that Mamoru frequently stole the spotlight in the middle of a battle while barely contributing to the fight.  
Ami was less amused. "But doesn't she brag about it whenever she goes out with Mamoru? It seems unreasonable for nobody to have known about it ahead of time."  
Makoto's grin actually got wider. "Ah, but if you recall, Usagi's been dating Mamoru, and for that matter planning their wedding, for years, but claims they still haven't had any... 'bedroom bonanzas' yet. If she decided that she was going to go out with him and take it all the way, do you think she'd have the nerve to tell us first?"  
Minako's eyes widened. "And if she didn't come back last night... OMIGOSH! Gimme the phone! Quick! Quick! Someone find Mamoru's number! I must hear details at once!"  
Ami sweatdropped as she watched Minako start to rummage through Usagi's things, looking for her address book. "Don't you think you're jumping to conclusions here? I think she'd at least have the decency to tell me she couldn't come with me to meet my cousin."  
Makoto shrugged. "Do you have a better explanation? Besides, if she had canceled any plans, then someone would have asked why. Maybe it was a distraction tactic."  
"It might sound mean, but I really don't give her that much credit," Ami said bluntly.  
"Hush!" Minako shouted, holding the phone up to her ear. "It's ringing!"  
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Mamoru winced and clenched his teeth as he tenderly massaged his thigh, the pain causing several tears to leak out of the corners of his eyes.  
"I STILL don't know what the hell happened back there... I sensed Usagi was in trouble, and then... ugh." The shots had come out of nowhere, and the masked support character of the Inner Senshi forces had not been remotely prepared for a fight, never mind dealing with a sniper. Heck, it was supposed to be the other way around!  
"Stupid coward, shooting me when I was distracted," Mamoru mumbled, laying down on his bed in his relatively large apartment. He had only recently gotten home from climbing down the office building he had been stranded on, and the journey had been long and extremely painful.  
Mamoru had an enhanced regenerative ability just like his allies, so while he had been completely unprepared to take a bullet, and had lain helplessly on top of a building all night, the normal risks of shock, blood loss, and infection were null. Even now the wound had completely healed, without even a scar.  
The flip side was that these abilities had apparently been created without bullets in mind. Which wasn't all that unreasonable, as all the ranged hits he had taken in the past were more-or-less energy based, and didn't leave an inch-long hunk of lead lodged in one of his most valuable muscles.  
The part-time masked hero, part-time intern tried to ignore the throbbing agony in his legs as he thought over his dilemma. Going to a surgeon was the most obvious answer, but he was fairly certain he'd have to explain how the bullet got into his leg without any indication of an entry wound whatsoever. It could even lead to a police query if they were overly concerned about how he got shot. Perhaps it was a minor problem compared to the bullet itself, but if there was a less conspicuous way to get the damned things removed, he would be glad to avoid the unwanted attention.  
The worst part, of course, was that the sense of Usagi being in danger, that urged him frequently to don his questionable monster-fighting attire and depart so that he could lend crucial verbal support, had disappeared for only a little while before it came back full force. Continued exposure for hours on end had let him get in some valuable practice in ignoring it (seeing how he wasn't about to rush out and help in his current shape), but it was still there, buzzing in the back of his head and keeping any chance of sleep at bay.  
_Brrring! Brrring!_ Mamoru growled as his phone started ringing in his ear; yet another annoyance to keep him from finding any peace in his mangled state.  
Picking up the phone, he made no attempt to mask his current frustration when he spoke. "Who is this, and what do you want?"  
There was a moment of silence on the other end, and then Minako's voice responded meekly. _"It's me, Mina. Uhm... hi?"_  
Mamoru calmed down slightly at hearing the blonde's voice. "Hi. Did you want something? I'm kind of busy right now."  
_"You are? Ah ha! So I take it Usagi's there with you?"_  
"No, as a matter of fact, she's not," he said, feeling his irritability rise as the buzzing in the back of his mind got louder with a simple mention of that name, "I haven't seen her, or anyone for that matter, all day. Or night. Or the night before that."  
_"... Why not? Been pulling some long shifts at the office?"_  
"Long shi-LOOK HERE!" Mamoru shouted angrily, "I was stranded on the top of that office building for two days with a bullet in each leg! I just got home, and there are about a dozen messages on my machine! I still haven't eaten since I was shot! And who knows how much trouble I'm going to get into for missing work yesterday while I was up on the roof bleeding! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find a good surgeon who won't ask too many questions! Goodbye!"  
_Click!_  
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Minako blinked as she heard the line disconnect, and somberly replaced the telephone on its base.  
Makoto, Ami, and Luna all waited anxiously for the verdict, both of them having only heard Minako's end of the conversation.  
"Well? What's going on?" Makoto asked eagerly.  
Frowning deeply, the blonde sat down cross-legged on her bed and crossed her arms over her chest, appearing to be in deep contemplation. "It would seem... corporate Japan is far more cutthroat than we could have possibly imagined."  
The others sweatdropped. "And Usagi?" Luna asked.  
"No craps," the blonde responded, to the absolute confusion of the others.  
"I think you mean 'no dice'," Ami mumbled, "and this is getting ridiculous."  
"I agree. As running gags go, it's pretty pathetic," Makoto said condescendingly while looking at Minako.  
"Not THAT," Ami murmured, rubbing her head. "Where could Usagi have gone off to? Maybe she's with Rei?"  
Minako shook her head. "I doubt it. Rei's been running through the library looking at DAPC articles since last night. Why would Usagi pull her away from that to do something without inviting any of us? And you KNOW Usagi wouldn't want to join her."  
Makoto, smacked a fist into her upraised palm. "Ah! Maybe she's visiting Hotaru!"  
"Hotaru's been on a class trip to Okinawa since yesterday," Luna said, shaking her head. "She won't be back for a week."  
"Visiting Haruka and Michiru?"  
The others stared at Minako. "Why would she do that?" Makoto finally asked.  
"Dunno. Worth a shot, though."

Ami sighed and then started walking toward the fridge. "Well, now I'm worried. You guys call Rei and Haruka and make sure she isn't with either of them. I guess I'll run a search on the Mercury computer." Then she mumbled under her breath, "Geez, I'm starting to get a headache... crazy blondes."  
As Minako got to work back in the main room, Ami opened the refrigerator and, per habit, reached for some juice. On the refrigerator door, however, she spied several tall cans of Asahi, and her hand stopped short.  
She glanced at the beer, and her hand twitched. Among the inner Senshi, Makoto was the only one who was legal to drink, even if she had turned twenty only recently. But college life being the way it was, and given that alcohol was freely available for purchase from vending machines all across Tokyo, the law hadn't managed to keep quite the stranglehold on teenage life that it had hoped for. Minako regularly indulged herself, both during parties and at home, Rei considered herself a "social drinker", and the two had convinced Usagi to try a bit every so often (more often it was Rei, as she didn't have to share a dorm room with the girl and her wretched hangovers).  
Certain parts of Ami's brain protested; if for no other reason, she couldn't let her friends see her drinking when she had lectured them against it so often. Another part, which seemed much more friendly and reasonable, told her that if anything, they'd be happy for her, glad that she had started to relax more, and that she'd just do a better job of fitting in amongst her beloved friends and fellow Senshi.  
Her willpower vanquished, the blue-haired woman grabbed one of the tall aluminum cans and closed the fridge, popping it open as she walked toward her closet.

"Well, she's not with Rei," Minako mumbled. "And Ami, Rei says that she's going to come over so you can tell her about... uh... wait..." The blonde stared incredulously at Ami as she crossed the room toward her own desk, where the Mercury computer laid buried beneath a disorganized mound of video game controllers and PS2 disk cases. "Ami? Are you drinking beer?"  
Makoto and Luna's heads snapped around, and they too stared wide-eyed as the resident hacker gave them all an annoyed glare.  
"Is that a trick question, or what?" The bluette deadpanned, raising the can up to take a long gulp. 'Hmmm... not as good as the rum... but not bad.'  
"But... you don't drink," Makoto mumbled. Just how bad a day did Ami HAVE?  
"Until today, I didn't act, either," Ami snapped as she freed the Mercury computer from the rest of her belongings and booted it up. "Are you going to call Haruka, or what?"  
"Right! Right away," Minako said nervously, starting to feel a bit disturbed by the normally mousy girl's attitude.

As Minako and Ami worked, Luna and Makoto watched the latter of the two chug the rest of the beer down. Within moments the blue-haired hacker was finished with it, and tossed the empty can toward the garbage can by the bed as she wiped her mouth with her other arm. Neither of the two spectators were surprised that she missed.  
"Wow. She must have picked up that technique from Rei," Makoto whispered, both perturbed and impressed by the sight. Rei may have clung to the title "social drinker," but she certainly wasn't fooling anyone.  
"Do you think we should stop her?" Luna whispered. "Or... you know, say something?"  
"If it'll get her to mellow out a bit, I say let her chug herself asleep," the ponytailed woman mumbled, once again massaging her right breast.  
Minako pouted as she hung up the phone, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Well, Haruka's place was a bust. I got the machine. Either they're out somewhere, or they're..." She started making strange gestures with her hands, which the others took every opportunity to ignore; they knew what she meant. "And I don't really know why Usagi would be with them. I mean, with them out somewhere! I wasn't implying that she would be... I mean, why would she be? She obviously not like that. Curious and adventurous maybe, but certainly not absolutely, definitively... why are you looking at me like that?"  
Luna turned away, deciding that Minako's trail of thought was an awkward and unnecessary distraction from the matter at hand. "I swear, how could Usagi have left overnight without telling anybody? It's irresponsible!"  
"Uhm... guys?"  
Minako, Makoto, and Luna all turned toward Ami, who was pointing a trembling hand toward the glowing monitor screen of her computer.  
"I... I don't think you're gonna like this."  
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"So lemme get this straight," Ranma said irritably, his left eye twitching. "I walk in here with a bloody shoulder and second-degree burns..."  
The pigtailed man pointed toward Snake, who was holding a wet cloth over one eye while using a long rifle as a crutch. "Those injuries led to Snake walking in here with four minor fractures, two dislocations, a black eye, and probably a decent bit of internal bleeding, too."  
"I SAID I was sorry," the Lieutenant mumbled, earning no sympathy from anybody.  
"And now that we've dragged our mangled bodies five miles from the nearest hospital to get here, we find out that Seras can't help us, because HE somehow managed to get a severe concussion?"  
Asuka nodded. "That's the long and short of it. Sorry," she mumbled noncommittally. She felt bad for Ranma, and sort of felt sorry for Snake, she really did. But acknowledging that sympathy would have led to guilt, and once she started feeling guilty about severely hurting her subordinates, then her entire management style fell into question.  
Junko frowned disapprovingly and crossed her arms under her breasts. "Geez! What was that man up to? Did he fall down the stairs again?"  
"Fall down the stairs..." Asuka said bemusedly. "I can neither confirm nor deny that statement as fact."  
As the three returning officers started grumbling about Seras' incompetence, Asuka felt that she had sufficiently deflected suspicion from herself, and decided to change the subject.  
"So, the target was completely destroyed? No chance of recovering any useful remains?"  
"No, Ma'am! No chance of recovery at all, Ma'am!" Snake said proudly, managing to stand up straight and salute while still leaning on his gun.  
"And you have no memory at all of being told to capture any confirmed zombies relatively unharmed?"  
"No, Ma'am! No chance of memory at all, Ma'am!" Snake lied proudly, still standing up straight.  
Asuka sighed. "I see. Whatever." She turned slightly to face Junko. "Well, seeing how Tuko has mysteriously been injured, and Sakura no longer works here, you're the closest thing we have to a nurse. I guess you'll have to take care of them."  
"She's a psychiatrist," Snake pointed out. "Both me and Ranma are trained in regular first aid. We can-MRGHFF!" His protest was silenced as a piece of cloth was suddenly wrapped around his mouth from behind.  
Ranma was reasonably uncomfortable with this turn of events. Not so much with people manhandling Snake, as that would be quite hypocritical of him, but more from the fact that Junko had used her shirt as a gag. "At least she's wearing a bra this time..."  
The redhead giggled, and wrapped an arm around Snake's neck before pulling him close, and squishing his head against her breasts. "Don't worry boys, I'll take REAL good care of you. Now lets find a nice, private room where we can make you feel better, hmm?"  
"HMGHRPHL!" Snake said, waving one arm in the air and gesturing to Asuka for help.  
"Er... actually, I think my contrived healing abilities have started kicking in now," Ranma started to back away toward the door. "So I think I'll just go back out on pa-HEY!" The martial artist cried out in surprise as Junko managed to grab his pigtail with her free hand. "Ow! No! Stop!"  
Junko grinned and began to drag both men along with her as she approached the women's locker room (which was now practically a private room, with a total of two officers who could use it). "Don't be such a baby! I'm going to make you feel MUCH better..."  
"I'm VERY uncomfortable about this!" Ranma shouted impotently as he was hauled inside.  
"Mgrphn," Snake agreed sourly.

Outside the locker room, Asuka sweatdropped as she watched the door slam shut.  
"... I wonder if that was the right thing to do." Then she shrugged. "Oh well. Can't start doubting my decisions all the time. Now what happened to that damage report?"  
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Kyle and Tiro laid back in the reclining car seats of the DAPC police cruiser as they waited out the length of their patrol, cups of flavored ice sitting in the holders between them.  
While Snake and Ranma took their duty to seek out and destroy the numerous abominations that threatened Japan seriously (though in Snake's case that was just a good excuse for searching out things to kill), Tiro, to put it simply, did not. He participated in battles not because he desired to fight or even because he had a duty to fight, but because he was being paid a very good salary to fight, and because there were certain times that fleeing was infeasible.  
He was a coward. He freely admitted to being a coward. And he weathered the insults and disgust of greater, braver souls with an indifference found only in those that have nothing in the way of dignity or pride.  
Despite this, Asuka had even managed to make the DAPC's laziest, most lecherous member into a useful enough combat asset to justify his salary, though much to Tiro's despair, she favored him mostly as a decoy.  
Balancing out this clear act of abuse on the battlefield was the fact that Tiro rarely did any work outside of battle, and always got away with it. Patrols were spent cruising college campuses looking for cute girls, or simply relaxing outside of a favored ice cream parlor. Of course, there were other tasks that Tiro could have been given that were harder to weasel out of, but they were usually important enough that Asuka wouldn't dare leave them to someone of Tiro's incompetence.  
Kyle, on the other hand, did not share any of Tiro's views or flaws, but was gullible enough to be manipulated like a block of putty. The blond man may have been the second highest rank in the department, but that didn't fool anybody as to his ability to make decisions. Thus it was that he had been convinced, with nothing but Tiro's assurances, that relaxing and eating was a greater service to the public than actively doing their jobs.  
Alone together, the two police officers embodied such uselessness that their sloth almost became a force unto itself. Laziness coupled with stupidity, cowardice with apathy, and lechery with childish curiosity. They were perfectly flawed.  
Which isn't to say, of course, that the two didn't react at all when an unguided explosive missile stabbed into the front of a parked car, blowing it apart into flaming chunks of shrapnel and shredding the two adjacent cars. They just took their time about it.

_Sluuuurp!_ Kyle put down his shaved ice and scratched his head as he looked out the window at the blazing wreck that used to be a blue 1998 Honda. "Wow. Didn't see that coming."  
"Nope. It was pretty sudden," Tiro mumbled, craning his neck slightly to look outside while trying to ignore shouting civilians rushing past them.  
Kyle frowned, and remained silent for a moment. "Should we do something? Like... I dunno... stop whatever it is that's blowing up cars?"  
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Let's not be hasty here!" Tiro chided the taller man. "Too many people have died from rushing into action without a plan! First things first: are we in any immediate danger?"  
The lieutenant commander shrugged. "Probably. I'd think that a guy firing missiles at cars would probably want to destroy the one with police in them."  
"Or WOULD he?" Tiro said, eating a bite of his ice with a spoon. "I mean, our car is clearly marked, and it's considerably larger than those adjacent. If one had the intention of blowing up cars at all, would one not start with the vehicle likely to possess officers of the peace? Officers that would take up arms immediately to stop the miscreant if they didn't have better things to do?"  
Kyle grimaced as he tried to find a way out of that logic. He failed. "I guess you're right. What's the plan?"  
"Well, naturally, as you're the superior officer that's up to you," Tiro said, smirking. "However, I would recommend, Commander, that we lay low and wait to see if the problem resolves itself. That way, we increase our chances of gathering useful intel, and conserve more energy for our eventual response, should one become necessary!"  
"Whoa... uh, I mean, YES! That's what we'll do! Proceed with laying low!"  
Tiro grinned. "Yes, Sir!"

Atop the building it had been standing on when it fired the missile, Unit Shin-Alpha stoically awaited the response of its targets with the type of careless patience only a machine could muster.  
Any human in the android's place would have assumed that the targets weren't present. After all, what kind of police officers sat cooped up in their patrol car while some lunatic was destroying motor vehicles right in front of them?  
For Shin-Alpha though, the presence of the officers was not in question. Its sensors could easily pick up the two adult males lounging in the clearly marked DAPC patrol vehicle, and its more advanced sensors could even detect the unique bio-energy pattern generated from Kyle's genetically altered body.  
Eventually though, even the cold, calculating battle android had to conclude that its original plan had failed. The targets had not budged from the spot, even though the civilians had long ago run screaming from the scene of the explosion, leaving only a few scattered pedestrians pointing at her from behind scattered mailboxes, benches, and other forms of inadequate cover.  
Revising its intelligence on the situation, Shin-Alpha came to the only acceptable conclusion: the targets had not noticed the blast. Response: Create another blast with greater visibility.  
_Cha-chunk!_ Loading up another wrist rocket, Yoshi's personal battle android took aim.

_KWA-THOOM!_  
Tiro winced and shielded his eyes as the car parked two vehicles ahead of them detonated violently, causing the car directly behind it, and directly in front of the patrol car, to bounce up from the force.  
Kyle frowned once again as bits of metal bounced off the windshield. "Wow. That one was pretty close. Should we do something now?"  
Tiro snorted. "Hardly. Remember what I said about gathering more intel? Tell me, what can you divulge from this latest explosion?"  
"Well, obviously that depends on what 'divulge' means," Kyle said, crossing his arms over his chest.  
"The answer, my dull, over-muscled friend, is that we can now confirm that, with two rocket attacks and no impact against our vehicle, whoever is doing the shooting either isn't trying to hit us, or has really bad aim and will probably run out of ammo before they hit us."  
Kyle looked worried about that assessment. "Are you sure we can count on them missing our car until they run out of rockets?"  
Chuckling, Tiro once again picked up his flavored ice. "Lieutenant, there aren't many things in this world you can really count on, but the incompetence of others is surely one of them." He finished off his ice, then sighed as he put the cup down. "Besides, I have a sense of self-preservation like freakin' Spider Man. If anybody were to launch a missile at us, I'd be out the door and in the alleyway before you'd even see it coming."  
"Ah, I see," Kyle mumbled, nodding to himself and completely missing the fact that the described scenario would have ended with him being blown up.

For a rare occasion, Tiro was partially correct. While Shin-Alpha had been missing the police vehicle quite deliberately, it only had two wrist rockets in its total inventory of munitions, given the expensive nature of the weapons, and the limited storage space on the lithe android's body.  
"Mission objective in danger. Initial battle-plan subroutines overridden. Initializing subroutine 3-1-1 beta: Improvise."  
_Shnk!_ The Tesla claws on both wrists extended from their housing within the android's forearms, and Unit Shin-Alpha leapt off its perch down to the street below.

"You see, NOW I'm getting the sense that we're in trouble," Tiro murmured, glancing out the window.  
"Is it another missile?"  
Tiro shook his head. "No... I don't-"  
_C-CRACK!_ A thunderous crunch could be heard all along the street as a lithe, well-endowed redhead with cat-like sensor fins atop her head landed hard in the middle of the street, causing the asphalt to buckle and crack all around her.  
"Oh, hell..." Tiro's eyes widened as he recognized one of the few voluptuous female bodies he had never wanted to see again.  
"Hey! It's Shin... something! Tiro, what should we-" Turning around to ask his subordinate and "friend" for advice, he found that, as promised, the lecher's door was open and he was nowhere to be found. "Whoa. That was QUICK."  
Frowning, the lieutenant turned to look out the driver-side window, and noted that the deadly battle android was simply standing in the crater it had made, staring at the patrol car expectantly.  
"Huh. Probably for the best that he ran away. Wouldn't want him getting hurt." Gripping one hand into a fist, the relatively docile war machine that was Kyle Tekai opened his door and stepped out onto the street, prepared to do battle.

"All right, what do you want?" Kyle asked as he slowly made his way toward the robot, cracking his knuckles menacingly. "We were on patrol, you know. And if there's one thing Tiro hates, its having to stop a crime or random act of destruction when... uh..." The blonde trailed off as Shin-Alpha suddenly bolted away from him, and started sprinting down the road at top speed.  
"Was it something I said?" The lieutenant asked nobody in particular, noticing that the android stopped about half a mile down the road and turned toward him, ignoring the scattering pedestrians and the fleeing cars all around.  
Tiro poked his head out of the alley he had been hiding in. "Is she gone yet?"  
Kyle shook his head. "No. She's running, but... not all at once. I think she wants us to follow her."  
"Which we're not going to do, right?" Tiro asked, slowly emerging from the alley.  
The blonde man blinked. "Well, she did come all this way, and we made her have to blow up two cars to get our attention. It'd be rude to keep ignoring her."  
Tiro massaged his forehead as Kyle's stupidity started to wander into an extreme that even he would have difficulty dealing with. "No, it wouldn't. It's perfectly polite to not follow the enemy into a trap. I advise a retreat."  
Kyle sighed. "Well, I guess if you're... wait... what's it doing?"  
The two police officers watched curiously as Shin Alpha walked to the side of the road and picked up a parked car, lifting it high above its head.  
"It's probably just going to keep smashing cars trying to get us to follow it. I firmly suggest that, er..." Tiro trailed off as the android hurled the car toward the two officers, and he quickly fell flat onto the ground.  
_WHAM! CRRRRRNCH!_ The sounds of steel grinding against steel assaulted the officers' ears as the thrown vehicle struck their patrol car, smashing the two cars together into one bouncing wad of debris.  
Kyle frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. "And now I suppose you want to try and outrun her?"  
Tiro sighed. It looked like there was no getting out of this one. Although he had no idea why the FA's most advanced battle android would bother to lead them into a trap when it could probably kill the both of them before any kind of backup could arrive. Kyle was strong, and ridiculously tough, but Shin-Alpha was fast, and equipped with much better weapons than either of them had on hand.  
'Wait... backup. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good idea.' Tiro thought, pulling out his cell phone. "Okay, fine. We'll follow her, but I'm sure as hell not going after that thing with just the two of us."  
"Good idea! Let's go!"  
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"Damn. Are you sure?" Asuka mumbled as she quickly typed some notes into the computer, the phone mouthpiece being held against her shoulder with her head.  
"... Yup, that's Shin-Alpha. You realize it's probably a trap, right? It's obviously trying to lead you somewhere."  
The blue-haired woman waited as Tiro explained his feelings in that regard.  
"Right. So your first thought is to get more of us down there for them to kill. Maybe it's not just trying to get rid of you two?"  
Another pause followed her rhetorical question.  
"Don't be stupid. Kyle and the car are the only assets down there worth anything. And the car's already gone."  
This pause was much shorter.  
"Why yes, I was calling you worthless. I'm glad to see you pick up on these things. That brainpower might just get you promoted one day!" Asuka said in a bright and cheerful voice. "No. I was mocking you again."  
The police captain sighed. "Anyway, we'll be down there soon. Try and figure out... no, wait, never mind. Just go on and follow it. You and Kyle would probably be the most likely ones to survive whatever it is they have planned anyway. The rest of us will back you up."  
There was a final pause, and Asuka smirked.  
"That's why I'm the tactician, and you're the bait. Move out!" Dropping the earpiece back on the receiver, Asuka finished the notes about Shin-Alpha's latest appearance. "Limited skill in understanding human perceptions... not unexpected from an A.I. At least we can be sure this isn't one of Igov's traps." The cyborg general would have at least done it more gracefully. It probably would have still been an obvious ploy, but Igov had a way of making his ploys look masterful and intimidating, even when they failed.  
Getting up from her desk, Asuka quickly walked toward the women's locker room, where she assumed the rest of her force still was. "If we do this right, we can finally nail that master android. That'd be a huge help." Despite the Freedom's Angels impressive mass-production capabilities, the rare appearance of the elusive Mark VI model android seemed to indicate that it was beyond their capacity to create in numbers. Meaning that its destruction would greatly benefit Tokyo's defenders, as the assassin bot had accounted for the deaths of dozens of Core soldiers and key military personnel.  
She reached the locker room door, and pushed it open.  
"Saotome! Sna-WHAUGH!" The police captain nearly fell over as she realized that Ranma and Snake had been stripped down to their boxers, each one looking thoroughly humiliated. Still, in all fairness, they each looked to have received basic first aid in the form of ointments and bandages, so at least Junko had done her job while taking advantage of the situation. "What are you doing? Get dressed already!" Asuka shouted, her face reddening.  
"I thought you'd never ask," Ranma mumbled, reaching for the pile of clothing on the floor. Before he could grab anything, however, Junko slapped his hand away, and then wagged her finger at the pigtailed man.  
"Oh, no you don't! You can't put your clothes on over the bandages!"  
"What? Why not?" Ranma said incredulously.  
"Doctor's orders!" The redhead sang, winking at him.  
"You're a psychiatrist!" Ranma complained, once again reaching for his clothes.  
Once again, Junko stopped him, this time grabbing his wrist. "And as a psychiatrist, I'd have to say your frustration smacks of a lack of affection and sexual release. Which can best be dealt with by-"  
"CHIKIKO!" Asuka growled. "Why are YOU in your underwear too?"  
Junko glared at her superior in annoyance, as if Asuka wasn't supposed to notice that she was alone with two half-naked men wearing only a red lace brassiere and panties. "And why are **you** here, anyway? I would've thought explaining how three buildings were burned down to kill one zombie would have taken more time."  
"Shut up! Yamazaki and Tekai ran into Shin-Alpha while on patrol. It looks like it's trying to lead them somewhere. We have to either cut it off and destroy it, or at least back them up once they stumble into a trap. So hurry up and get dressed!"  
"Roger!" "Yes, Ma'am!" The two men made a grab for their clothing while Junko fumed silently.  
Snake had just started to slip his pants on, when he noticed Asuka still watching them, arms crossed over her chest. "Uh, Captain... are you gonna turn around or something?"  
"Are you going to hurry up and put your clothes on, or are you going to sit there and ask stupid questions?" Asuka snapped back, though the blush that appeared earlier got brighter, and she didn't look away. Snake sighed and pulled his pants up, and Junko started dressing as well.  
Ranma snapped to attention, standing up straight before Asuka had even finished berating Snake (his experiences as a teenager had trained him to dress and change clothing at speeds far beyond normal). "All set!"  
"Good! Now get to the armory and prepare to fight armored units! Let's move out!"  
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Elswhere, on the other side of Shin-Alpha's destination, a group of four college students turned super heroines gathered outside the high fences of an industrial junk pile, planning their infiltration of this dastardly complex.  
"I don't get it. I just don't get it." Venus murmured, staring up at the towers of crushed and rusted vehicles and equipment. "What's going on here?"  
Mercury shook her head, her visor active as she kept scanning the premises with the Mercury Computer. "I don't know, honestly. Somehow, for some reason, Usagi... no, Sailor Moon was taken here. She is definitely transformed. And according to the scanner she's been transformed since yesterday."  
"There's no way she'd come to a dump like this on her own, transformed or not," Sailor Mars said distastefully. "... No pun intended. She's been forced here somehow."  
Sailor Mercury nodded in agreement. "That makes the most sense. And given that she didn't speak to any of us before she disappeared, I'd have to guess she was abducted directly yesterday morning." Then she bit her lip nervously. "The thing is, I still can't detect anything other than Sailor Moon down there."  
Jupiter frowned. "Well, there has to be SOMETHING with her. She WAS kidnapped, right?"  
"That's what we're assuming," Mercury admitted. "It's the only thing that makes sense. But I can't detect any Negaverse energy, daemonic energy, dark magic, or Silver Millenium magic other than Sailor Moon herself! I can't even detect any life signs down there! It's like she's been abandoned!"  
"Well that can only make this easier," Sailor Venus decided, stepping forward and tearing open the old, poorly-maintained steel fence.  
Mercury twitched. For some reason, hearing her fellow Senshi imply this would be easy caused a feeling of impending doom to settle in her stomach. "Yeah... let's hope so..."  
"By the way," Mars began, "why isn't Tuxedo Kamen here? Isn't he supposed to like, you know, search Usagi out whenever she's in trouble?"  
Venus shrugged. "Well, from what I can tell, he's been in trouble himself for the past few days. I did try calling him again once we found out where Usagi was, but he wasn't there. He did talk about seeing a doctor."  
"Calling in sick on rescuing your girlfriend. Whatta guy," Jupiter said sourly. Sometimes she really did wonder what Usagi thought was so great about Mamoru anyway. There were worse guys out there, and he was attractive, sure, but if SHE were to become the ruler of the entire planet and start her own eternal kingdom, she would have aimed higher.

The four Senshi wandered further into the junk yard, looking curiously about at the numerous piles of trashed machines that had been more or less stacked into discrete spires about the filth-ridden landscape. Everything from trucks to steamshovels to computers had been deposited in the yard haphazardly, though Mercury noted that the majority of the junk was metal, and most of it was large machines.  
Mars, on the other hand, noted that the disrepair and neglect given to such junk (as could very well be expected) had led to the relatively even valleys between the scrap piles being covered in rusted, jagged metal plates and shards, making the terrain rough at best, and sadistic at worst. 'Why the hell am I wearing high heels while fighting evil, anyway? They're not even high heel boots, like the others! God, this hurts!'  
"So where is she, exactly?" Venus asked, rubbing her head as she scanned the twisted landscape. "Did someone just beat her up and leave her here?"  
"I'm not sure," Sailor Mercury mumbled, once again doing a different scan with her computer. "Huh... according to this, she's a ways underground, actually. But there's a lot of material between her and the surface, so the reading is kind of fuzzy."  
Mars' eyes widened. "Are you saying she's buried?"  
"It seems likely," the blue-haired Senshi admitted, "but I can pick up her vital signs, since they resonate with her energy signature. Wherever she is, she's alive, and relatively healthy. Though obviously, we have to find her and get her out of here as quickly as possible."  
As Mars and Venus mulled that over for a moment, Sailor Jupiter suddenly shouted out to her friends.  
"Hey! You guys! Come look at this!"  
Mars, Venus, and Mercury all turned to look at what had attracted their tallest member's attention, and blinked at the sight of an armored battle robot sitting at the base of a junk pile. Its head, one arm, and one shoulder cannon had been removed or destroyed, leaving patches of twisted and frayed wire where it seemed something should be attached. In addition, there were scores and small dents all over the main torso armor, indicating that the machine had sustained light gunfire.  
"Whoa. What IS that thing?" Venus asked, immediately turning toward Mercury.  
However, it was the Senshi of Mars who answered. "Wow! It's a real boomer! What's it doing here?"  
Jupiter blinked. "Boomer? What's a boomer?"  
"It's a type of terrorist weapon, I think. I saw a picture of one in a DAPC article. Nobody knows how the terrorists obtain the funds and materials to build them, but they've been aiding their forces for months."  
"Hey! There are more over here!" Venus shouted, looking around a junked bulldozer at another scrap mound. "Some of these ones don't even look damaged!"  
Sailor Mercury gulped. "Okay... this is getting just a bit creepy now. I'm starting to get Metal Arms flashbacks." 'Please don't let zombiebots burst from the walls. GOD, I hated that level...'  
"This one looks like a woman!" Jupiter shouted, pointing to a very female-looking humanoid torso with burnt wires and sockets in place of the head and arms.  
"This one's moving!" Venus said excitedly, pointing to a bright blue boomer as it stood up and turned toward her. Then its shoulder cannons, normally locked vertically onto its back, slid upward and then fell forward over its bulbous shoulders. "Wait... it's... moving?"  
Mercury twitched. "Oh, hell..."

_KWABOOM!_ Sailor Venus yelped as she barely managed to avoid being blasted directly with the devastator boomer's shoulder cannons, instead getting tossed aside as the blast swept her off her feet.  
"What is this! Sailor Moon was kidnapped by robots?" Mars shouted, summoning her power to her. "**Mars flame sniper**!" She shouted, pointing one hand in front of her, aimed at the boomer, while the other was drawn back as if pulling a bowstring. A bright red lance of fire appeared, ready to be fired.  
The boomer had already begun tactical maneuvers, but its bulk weighed down the machine's booster jets, and cost precious seconds as it struggled to take to the air.  
_Kashrak!_ Bright red fire stabbed into the torso of the war machine, and its radiator made a brief, desperate effort to control the disastrous intake of heat before the boomer's ammo and fuel reserves exploded, sending flaming pieces of metal scything out in all directions.  
"Venus! Are you okay?" Sailor Jupiter yelled, noting that even a light tumble across the floor of the junk yard would be extremely painful, especially as under-dressed as they were.  
The blonde Senshi groaned and started to get up. "I think I have a rusty corkscrew in my thigh, and I think I swallowed a nail, but other than that..." her eyes widened. "Jupiter! Behind you!"  
Sailor Jupiter didn't even have time to turn around before she felt something smash into the back of her head, sending her flying into one of the adjacent junk piles, and teaching her precisely how Venus felt.  
"Another one, eh?" Mars muttered, turning around as she prepared to perform the same technique again.  
_Whrrrr... ch-chunk!_  
Feeling very uneasy at hearing machine-like noises from above her, Mars instinctively flinched as her form was briefly eclipsed by a large shadow.  
_Crunch!_ Bits of scrap and chunks of plastic shattered as the four-legged Black Sabre boomer landed right next to Sailor Mars, slowly turning the four huge cannons on its arms around toward the battle.  
Mars gulped. While the sheer size of the cannons, and the apparent difficulty in aiming them quickly, made the robot look clumsy at best, she had no illusions of being saved by magical endurance or fuku armor if one of those nailed her.  
"**Fire soul**!" Panicking, the Senshi of fire pointed her finger like a gun and aimed it at the metal monstrosity, launching several fireballs at a range of less than two meters.  
Not the smartest thing to do, but it could be forgiven. She simply wasn't use to blowing things up that were, themselves, chock full of high-grade explosives.  
_KWABOOOM!_

Mercury gasped as Mars disappeared in the midst of an Earth-shaking explosion, and bit her lip as she saw two more robots rise up atop the junk towers that surrounded them. Jupiter had already gotten up and was even now ripping the android that had struck her down in hand-to-hand combat, but Venus had been assaulted by another of the false humans, and wasn't doing nearly as well as the Thunder Senshi.  
"This is bad. We're at a tactical disadvantage here," she murmured, dashing over toward Mars to see if she was still capable of fighting. "Jupiter! Venus! Get out of the open! They have gunners on the towers!"  
Jupiter growled as she smashed her knee into the android she was fighting, causing chunks of metal and components to burst out the other side. "Mercury, now is NOT the time for your stupid video game lingo!" She tossed the broken machine away, and then turned around. "Now what do you me... oh. Robots with guns on the junk towers. Guess that makes sense." Then she dove to the side as a hail of missiles completely shattered the area she had been standing in, blowing gouts of flame and showers of hot metal in all directions.

Venus cursed as she took a left hook from the combat droid, and staggered backward. 'It just doesn't make any sense! Robots that look like women that use martial arts? Giant robots with cannons and missiles? Who the hell are we fighting? Skynet?' She growled as she charged forward and slugged the android across the face, caving in its metal skull and causing several circuits to rupture. 'I hated Terminator, too! AND the sequel! Only saw it so I could see Schwarzenegger... stupid time-travel plots... and that T-1000 thing was so friggin' cheap! Liquid metal, oh, sure!' She tried to deck the android again, but this time the assassin droid backflipped out of range, no doubt to gain distance for a charging attack.  
"Want to annihilate the human race, do you? Just try it, you time-traveling hunk of bad acting!" Venus shouted, pointing at the android accusingly.  
The MK. I combat android didn't have any time to respond to the verbal assault before a small rocket blasted it to smithereens, but it's safe to assume it would have had no idea what the blonde was talking about anyway.  
Sailor Venus would have cheered on the sudden destruction of her opponent, except that the rocket was one of many fired in her general direction, and she had to scramble behind a huge metal canister to avoid suffering the same fate.  
"What the hell is this! Rockets and cannons? Somebody bring back fireballs and magic discs!" The Senshi of love complained as the canister shook violently behind her.  
_BOOM!_ All at once her cover burst apart, throwing her face-first once again onto the jagged and twisted mercies of the scrap-ridden ground.  
"Hate... this... place... hate... robots... wanna... fight... youma..." pulling a thresher blade out of her midriff, Venus got up painfully and started to climb around one of the junk piles, spurred on by the noise of detonations behind her.

"**Shine aqua illusion**!" Sailor Mercury turned away as her attack smashed into one of the devastator boomers standing atop the junk spires, freezing it solid while the drastic drop in temperature played havoc with the machine's internals. "Mars? Can you stand?"  
"Just... one more minute..." the fire Senshi moaned. "My hair's not still on fire, is it?"  
"A little," Mercury admitted. "But it doesn't matter that much, right? I mean, it was black to start with."  
Mars spared a moment to glare at the blue-skirted Senshi, then quickly went about the business of rubbing her hair down to put out the flame.  
"This isn't good. We have no way of telling how many more of them there are," Sailor Mercury admitted, holding a crouching position behind half a car chassis. "It looks like the shooters retreated down the junk piles. We probably won't be able to pick them out again until they're already firing."  
Mars glared. "What the hell! I thought you said there was nothing here except Usagi!"  
Mercury glared back. "I said there was no Negaverse energy, demonic energy, or anything like that! Robots run on electricity!"  
"Well, now that you know what to look for, hurry up and scan for them!" Mars shouted.  
"You can't just 'scan' for electricity!" Mercury shouted back. "We live in a city! There are flows of electricity everywhere! Even in this junk yard, there are probably three dozen power lines above and below us! It's like looking for a needle in a... well... a big pile of other needles!"  
A sudden shout of surprise distracted the red and blue Senshi from their argument, and both women sobered.  
"Okay, fine," Mars growled, standing up slowly and dusting herself off. "Then we'll just have to slug it out the old-fashioned-" _Wham!_  
The two Senshi whirled around as a huge object burst through the adjacent junk tower, sending large hulks of metal bouncing past them.  
"Yeep!" Sailor Mars hopped out of the way as a large, generic industrial machine came crashing down upon the spot she had previously been standing on. Then she steeled herself and fell into a defensive stance as she gazed upon the new enemy.  
The newest robot looked like something out of an old science fiction movie, consisting mainly of one large spherical body with a single blue visor that appeared to be its visual sensors. From the sphere extended several metal tentacle-like appendages that distinctly reminded Sailor Mercury of Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2. Trailing behind the sphere were several thick cables and wires that flowed in a loose, ragged bundle over the trail it had gouged in the junk pile, which Mercury quickly tagged as a likely weak point. The rest of the sphere had short, stunted appendages and rods poking out of it, along with the occasional sunken concave portion and hole that had purposes unknown.  
"Feh. Not impressive. **Burning mandala**!" Sailor Mars did her short dance routine in order to summon the rings of flame, and smirked as circles of hot plasma flew toward the metal monstrosity.  
The robot responded with surprising laxity, using a few tentacles to pick up a broken-down truck and hurl it into the way of the attack. Upon contact the truck nearly disintegrated, falling apart in midair into a shower of molten metal and burning fragments.  
Mercury frowned. "Okay, try this! **Aqua rhapsody**!" A harp slowly appeared in her hands, and the Senshi of ice took a deep breath as she began to play.  
_Smash!_ Except she didn't get to, as the strange machine whipped out one tentacle and slammed her down into the ground, giving the genius Senshi her first taste of rusty terrain that battle.  
Mars winced. At least the response to her attack had been passive. 'Looks like I may have to the return the favor for her helping me sooner than I thought.'  
The new robot turned back toward the red-skirted woman. _"Initial combat analysis complete. Targets: Sailor Senshi classified threat index four. Proceeding with combat response."_  
Mars paled as several motes of light began appearing in the pits that dotted the sphere's surface. She noted unpleasantly that most of those pits seemed to face her general direction.  
_Fweeem! Zzzzow! Brak-ak-ak-ak-ak!_  
Numerous projectile weapons poured out the strange energy projectors, and beams and bolts of red and yellow bombarded the ground as the Senshi of fire dodged and sprinted away desperately.  
"AAAAAAH! Jupiter! Venus! Anybody! Somebody-OW!-stop this thing!" Mars ducked under a disruptor bolt, and then tried to jump behind a bulldozer, only to halt in her tracks and fall backward as a bright red, continuous laser beam cut right through her path.  
"Mars? Where are you?" Sailor Venus asked, circling around behind the scrap pile Mars was in front of, and looking worse for wear herself. Catching sight of the tentacled robot, she immediately went on the offensive. "**Venus crescent moon beam**!"  
This hardly went unnoticed by the spherical battle droid, and four tentacles curled around so that their tips formed the corners of a square, the middle of which was right in the energy beam's path.  
_WHAM!_ The claw-like tips of the tentacles sparked yellow, and Venus gaped as her beam struck a yellow square plane of energy, leaving the enemy robot at large unharmed.  
"Tentacles, smarts, lasers AND shields?" Mars shouted. "Oh, come on! Give us a break here!"  
"**Sparkling wide pressure**!" Jupiter shouted suddenly, appearing from behind Mercury (who was still debating whether or not she even WANTED to get up and participate in the battle anymore).  
Once again, four of the arms rose up and formed the corners of a screen to block the attack, and once again the magical projectile detonated upon the shield, long before it could strike the main body of the droid.  
_Kshzaack!_ This time, however, the entire robot started to shake, and sparks shot out from the sphere body as Jupiter's attack sent arcs of electricity trailing down its tentacles.  
"What the..." Mars stared as the massive war machine suddenly jerked back into the crevice it had created amongst the scrap heaps, its metal tentacles whipping about and knocking down junk and debris around it to cover its escape.

The others stared as the whir of gears and pounding of steel upon steel faded into the distance, and then turned to look at each other.  
"What was THAT all about?" Venus murmured. "And why didn't my attack scare it off like that?"  
Mercury staggered to her feet, trying to ignore all the little metroids that were floating around her head in circles. "It must've been... ugh... it must have been the EMP from her attack. Jupiter's lightning shocks create powerful electromagnetic bursts, and those can be dangerous to computers."  
The others stared at her wordlessly.  
The Senshi of ice sighed. "Like the EMP generator on the ship from the Matrix? Lightning bolts do the same thing."  
"Aaaaah," came the chorus of understanding.  
"Come to think of it, that thing did look a lot like the octopus robot things from that movie, didn't it?" Venus mused. "Though at least they weren't powered by an extension cord."  
_Whrrrrrr... Ch-chung!_  
The Senshi winced as they heard the distant sound of heavy machinery, and Mars pointed toward a path through the yard that conveniently moved away from the projected path of the spherical, tentacled war machine.  
"Come on! The other robots are still out there!"  
Mercury gulped as she followed with the others. "You know, I hate to be the one to keep bringing up this bad news, but we're at a severe strategic disadvantage here. We don't know the lay of land here, this terrain is awful for us, and it looks like we've stumbled into a trap."  
"Well, if we have Jupiter's powers, then we have an edge, right?" Sailor Venus guessed.  
"Not by much. I mean, the rest of us can deal with the smaller robots just fine, right?" Mars said, jumping over a wrecked Russian tank of WWII design. "But it'll be a big help if that big one shows up again. Maybe."  
Jupiter growled. "So has anyone figured out why we're under attack by killer robots? Or where, exactly, Usagi is in this mess?"  
Mercury screeched to a halt as they circled around another scrap pile, and dropped her visor over her eyes. "No. But I have a feeling we're getting close."  
The others nodded mutely. Standing before them, under a pile of scrapped war machines and a disturbing amount of dumped bullet casings, was a reinforced concrete bunker, complete with an open-topped pillbox and heavy blast doors that looked like they could have withstood several of the Senshis' weaker attacks.  
"Yeesh. Whoever runs this place needs to lighten up on the security. I mean, seriously," Venus said sternly, "not only do we have some kind of reinforced bomb shelter disguised with piles of industrial scrap, but its guarded by a legion of battle robots. And what're those? Automated gun turrets? Oh, that's just swell, isn't it? Can you say 'PARANOID'?" She frowned as she realized exactly what she was looking at, and the others' eyes widened. "Oh, fishsticks."

_Braa-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap!_  
Scattering as the automated machine guns opened fire, Jupiter cursed and charged up her attack in-between her hands. "**Sparkling wide pressure**!" She cursed again as the ball of lighting curved just out of the way of the leftmost turret, detonating on a pile of rusted drums.  
_BrrZACK!_ Ribbons of electricity lashed out over the drums, and the automated gun emitted a shower of sparks as the machine started to shake violently, and then proceeded to shut down.  
The pony-tailed woman blinked. "Wow. This EMP thing is actually pretty cool."

Mars dove behind a junked mech as the remaining gun tried to follow her movements, and she grit her teeth as the sound of metal striking metal rang in her ears.  
Actually, the gritting of teeth was just as much a result of the sharp, twisted metal beneath her digging into the bare expanses of skin that were her legs as a result of her diving, but the fire Senshi was firmly resolved in focusing on the more active danger first.  
Luckily she didn't have to, as one of Venus' energy beams smashed into the emplacement and annihilated it, as the weapon was unable to track more than one target when the Senshi had scattered.  
Mars breathed a sigh of relief as she stood up. "Okay, is everyone all right?" Then she stopped, and her face paled. "M-Mercury? MERCURY!"  
Jupiter and Venus turned at the shout, and their hearts leapt into their throats as they beheld their blue-skirted companion lying on the ground, curled up with her arms covering her side.  
"Mercury! AMI! SPEAK TO ME!" Mars cried, quickly crouching down next to her fallen comrade.  
"What? Ami's dead?" Venus asked, trembling as she approached slowly.  
Sailor Mercury twitched. "Not... dead..."  
Venus blinked, then exhaled deeply in relief, along with Jupiter and Mars. "Wow. These things must be tougher than I thought!" The Senshi of love patted the hardened white part of her suit around her waist (the only part of the Senshi outfit that could possibly be considered "armor"). "Who would have thought they were bulletproof?"  
Mercury clenched her teeth against the pain. "They're... not..."  
"... Ooh..."  
Mars gently picked up Ami's arm, and then slipped her hand under the wounded woman's body. "Do you think you'll be okay? Should we try and run for a hospital?"  
Mercury grimaced, finding it difficult to breath in anything but short, sharp gasps. "I should be... okay. Our healing p-powers... and endurance should... keep me alive." She coughed a bit, though she was thankful to see that no blood emerged from her mouth.  
"Get her behind that pillbox, quick!" Jupiter shouted, spotting one of the blue heavy support boomers climbing atop a nearby junk tower.  
"Aw crap, they're here!" Venus groused, backing away slowly as more of the combat droids shuffled around the mounds of scrap metal that separated the bunker from the rest of the junk yard.  
The Senshi of Jupiter crossed her arms in front of her, getting ready to summon her principle thunder attack. "Don't let them hit the pillbox! We have to protect Ami!"  
"And what am I supposed to do to keep them from shooting the pillbox?" Venus asked nervously. "There are too many of them!"  
The blonde swallowed as she saw one of the robots lower its shoulder cannons and aim in her general direction. This feeling of dread multiplied as she saw four other similar robots do the same thing. 'Oh well. It was a nice life, while it lasted. And I got laid a lot. That was fun. Oh, look, more of those stupid big-breasted girl-bots. They die first.' Taking aim at the androids, Venus started charging up her attack, while preparing herself for the lethal volley of retaliatory cannon fire that would follow.  
_BWAKOOM!_  
Then she blinked as one of the bright blue boomers exploded, through no effort of her own, or any of her fellow Senshi.

_BLAM! BLAM!_ The Mk. I android shuddered as its torso was ripped apart by shotgun fire, and fell forward lifelessly as metal shards and sensitive electronics blasted out its back.  
Snake grinned and ducked back behind the piles of metal plates that was his cover, and then took out his pistol and fired it at the androids that were hesitating between the targets in front of them, and the new targets behind them.  
_Bwam!_ One the battle droids lingered too long, and its head was rent asunder by an armor-piercing rifle bullet, tearing apart the vital CPU components located in the head.  
"Don't stop shooting now, Snake!" Asuka shouted, slowly advancing while she peered down the scope of her rifle. "If I manage to bag more kills than you, you can bet your ass a demotion is in order!" Trailing behind her, Tiro nearly crawled through the cover provided by the rough terrain, eternally glad that he and Kyle had met up with their fellow officers rather than having to deal with this by themselves.  
"HA! Keep dreaming, Captain!"  
Atop one of the junk spires, a devastator boomer deactivated its shoulder cannons, as the arc of fire was deemed too difficult from its current location. Raising its arm, the blast shields over its rocket launchers opened, and the battle droid prepared to unleash its payload right on top of the three officers making their way through the main path.  
_Crunch!_ That plan of action was rendered ineffective once the boomer's rocket-launching arm was torn right off.  
_Whang!_ Using the dismembered metal limb as a club, Kyle smashed the heavy robot aside, and knocked it off the scrap pile before it could activate its booster jets, sending it tumbling down the mountain of jagged debris.  
Wiping some sweat off his brow, the genetically altered cop lifted the huge heavy autocannon that he had lugged all the way up the junk tower, and opened fire on the heavy support boomers that were still changing targets.  
"Well, time to earn my check!" _Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!_  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_GZSHAAAK!_ Ranma backflipped away as a whip of blue-white plasma lashed at him from Shin-Alpha's Tesla claw, and then launched himself forward, charging at the same time that the android lunged for him.  
_Wsh! Krrclk!_ The crackle of electricity marked the passing of the Tesla claw as Ranma dodged to the side, and he quickly launched two kicks before he was forced to duck under another swipe from the second claw.  
Having landed the first two hits, Ranma tried to turn as he dodged and lash out with a stronger roundhouse, but Shin-Alpha dodged out of the way, bouncing off its hands and landing in a crouch just out of nominal lunging distance.  
_Shnk! Chunk!_ Ranma twitched as small energy projectors replaced the curved, electrified claws.  
"Aw, hell..." _SHEA! SHEA! SHEA!_  
The high-pitched scream of the android's disruptors filled the air, and as Ranma dodged he found himself wishing that he hadn't gotten separated from the other DAPC officers so effectively. At best, he would have really appreciated Asuka's impeccable aim to lend some support whenever the irritating super-droid got some space to unload its guns. Snake would have done just as well of course, if not better, but the pigtailed man certainly had no desire to expose himself to the mercy of Snake's weapons any more that day.  
Leaping high overhead as the energy bolts flew under him, Ranma was surprised as he saw the android turn around in a full retreat, speeding toward a short building that he could just barely make out among the endless sea of trash and debris that made up the landscape.  
Landing easily on his feet, and feeling glad that he was wearing military-issue heavy boots instead of Kung-fu slippers or high heels (he wasn't sure why women's shoes came up in his thoughts, but he accepted his satisfaction nonetheless), Ranma sprinted after the fleeing android, unwilling to let his foe escape.

_Bam!_ Slowing himself as he approached the half-buried building, Ranma frowned as he stared at the entrance that his quarry had used.  
It appeared that, among the reinforced concrete and layers of rusted metal plates and miscellaneous junk that covered it, the entrance he now stood in front of consisted of a rickety screen door. Which didn't even appear locked.  
Ranma looked to the side, and noted that there was a sign hanging from the shattered exoskeleton of a trashed Black Sabre boomer. Secret unguarded rear entrance! Authorized personnel only!  
The pigtailed man sweatdropped. "The sad thing is, it's NEVER a trap." Sighing, he stepped forward and resigned himself to the infiltration of the enemy stronghold. It was unlikely that he'd track down his original target, but there had to be SOMETHING down there worth checking out.  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"**Jupiter thunder crash**!"  
"**Venus love and beauty shock**!"  
_BLAM! BLAM!_ "Suck 12 gauge, you metal freaks!" _BLAM!_

Venus couldn't help but stop and stare as she watched the man with the bandanna blow apart two androids that were lunging for him while they were in mid-leap. His accuracy was perfect; he pulled the trigger, and the threats that were a split second from tearing him in two like a tissue turned into clouds of shrapnel and scrap.  
Looking at the ease of it, the Senshi of love found herself feeling a little jealous. It had taken her a good bit of hand-to-hand fighting to rid herself of the one android she had to fight, and she had taken quite a few blows, too. This man, though... this... mere cop, annihilated such foes with a practiced twitch of his finger.  
She continued to watch as he blasted a third android with the pistol he carried in his other hand as it lunged down the main path toward the two other officers bringing up the rear. Three shots to the back, and the false woman fell, its internals suffering a critical failure from the damage.  
"Venus? VENUS! Are you all right?"  
Jupiter's voice snapped the blonde Senshi out of her reverie, and Sailor Venus quickly continued what she was doing, taking aim at one of the boomers atop the junk towers. "Last target is mine! **Venus crescent moon beam**!"

_Kablam!_ Asuka raised an eyebrow as she watched a white beam of light obliterate the last of the heavy support boomers, and rushed forward.  
'I have to admit... the names of the attacks are stupid, and they seem to do a lot of unnecessary posing, but I'll be damned if they don't get the job done.' "All right ladies, what's the situation?"  
Jupiter and Venus turned toward the police captain, and they both scowled.  
"Hey! You're that lady who arrested us a few days ago!" Jupiter growled.  
"Yes, I am. And you're welcome for showing up," Asuka said, moving past the two Senshi in front, and heading toward the two she had spied lying in the cover next to the bunker.  
Climbing over the wall of the pillbox, Asuka grimaced as she saw that one Senshi had been wounded.  
Mercury looked up to see who the new arrival was, and her eyes widened. "A-Asuka!"  
Though slightly perturbed that one of the Senshi remembered her first name, and apparently deemed herself familiar enough to use it, Asuka dismissed it as she took her radio off her belt. After all, they HAD met before, if not under awkward circumstances.  
"Chikiko, we have wounded here. Looks like the cheerleaders from the other day got into another scrap."  
A vein popped up on Mars' head from being called a cheerleader, but she managed to contain herself. After all, the situation was rather serious, and the woman was Ami's cousin.  
"We need to figure out where Saotome went. What's your status?"  
_Pssht! "Um... I'm reloading."_  
The police captain frowned. "Again? I only saw one rocket."  
_"Er... no. Still. This thing is heavy! And I'm afraid to handle this ammo too roughly; what if it explodes? Can't you get Snake to come over here and help me with this?"_  
A sweatdrop rolled down Asuka's head. "Well... you know what, forget it. Just put the launcher down. You blew one up, you did good. Go look for Ranma. Tekai, I want you to continue to cover the area."  
_"Roger! Thanks!" Pssht! "Whatever you say, Captain." Pssht!_  
"Yamazaki!" Asuka then yelled out, distracting the lecher from where he was discretely admiring Sailor Venus. "Go hook up with Chikiko and find Saotome! We have to figure out where he went!"  
Finally, she turned toward Snake, who was still crouched behind some cover a ways behind, looking for more targets. "Lieutenant!"  
The weapons expert stood up immediately. "Ma'am!"  
Asuka pointed at the bunker behind her. "Judging by the number of enemy droids around here, it would seem this is an enemy stronghold. Make it stop existing, please."  
Snake smirked, and the Senshi all felt an inexplicable chill run down their spines. "Whatever you say, Cap!" Grinning, he walked over to the blast doors of the bunker while removing a box-shaped object from one of the many pockets on his pant legs.

Finally, the blue-haired woman turned to Mercury. "Okay, now let's see what we can do for you. What are we looking at?"  
Mars frowned. She didn't like the way this woman had come in and seemed to be trying to take charge of things, but if there was a chance she could help Mercury, she would put her reservations aside. "She took some machine gun fire in the side here. We're tougher than normal humans, and we have healing powers, so we don't think she'll die, but she seems to be in a lot of pain."  
Asuka nodded. "Enhanced toughness and healing factor. Got it." She was quite used to dealing with such qualities. Pulling up Mercury's arm, she raised an eyebrow as she saw that the white part of the outfit was complete and unscathed under the blood that had collected on it. "I assume the outfits regenerate too?"  
Mars nodded mutely, and Mercury managed a grateful smile despite the pain.  
"It's okay, really... I just need a little time to rest. In fact, I think the skin over the wound has almost healed by now, so there's nothing to worry about."  
The police captain looked skeptical. "Really? So the bullets have completely pierced the skin? They're actually inside you?"  
Mercury nodded. "Well, yeah, but..." her face lost some color as realization dawned. "Oh, dear..."  
Mars blinked. "What? What is it?"  
Asuka shook her head. "You do NOT want a wound healing on you while there are bullets still inside. Unless you can reassure me that your healing powers can break down huge lead concentrations in a reasonable time frame, we're going to have to get those things out of you."

_KWAAA-BOOOM!_  
All the assembled women winced as the nearby blast doors were blown open, sending a wave of heat and dust into them.  
Sailor Jupiter turned toward the man with the bandanna dubiously. "Hey, be careful! We have a friend in there we need to rescue!"  
Snake waved off the complaint. "Don't worry about it! We do rescues all the time!" As he was about to enter, he stopped and thought about that statement. "Actually, that's not true. Not successful ones, anyway. But I maintain that it'll be fine!"  
Jupiter and Venus sweatdropped, suddenly wondering about their supposed good fortune in getting the backup they did.

Mercury squeezed her eyes shut as the dust from Snake's bomb stung her eyes, and nodded as she coughed. "I... yes. We should get it done now, while the wound is still open." She was actually quite embarassed that she hadn't realized that on her own. She WAS in training to be a doctor, after all. "Where's your med kit?"  
Asuka bit her lip thoughtfully. "Well, if you say that the flesh has almost sealed already, then it'll probably be completely healed by the time I get back from the patrol car. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to improvise."  
"Improvi-aye-aye-aye-aye..." Sailor Mercury trailed off stuttering as Asuka withdrew her combat knife and started checking the edge of the relatively large, serrated blade. "Whoa! Hey! You can't use that! We don't have any... uh... disinfectant! Or bandages! How are you planning on stopping the bleeding!" She started to babble, her face whitening.  
The police captain showed no sign of sympathy. "If your healing is everything you've implied it is so far, then it will keep you alive while I cut out the bullets." The three non-wounded Senshi grimaced, all very glad that they had been quick enough to dodge. "If bandages are a problem, you could always stand to lose that sappy bow on your back."  
"No! Wait! Maybe proper surgery is the way to go here!" Mercury cried desperately. "You know, like with anesthetic!"  
Instead of responding to the ice Senshi's complaints, Asuka pointed toward the others. "You three, hold her down. Green skirt, you look like you've got some muscles; you take the legs. You two each take an arm and shoulder. Keep her down firm."  
The Senshi made no move to comply, instead looking at each other pensively.  
"Hey! Do I have to repeat myself?" Asuka shouted, startling the girls. "Get to it! Or does it matter to you that your friend has a dozen chunks of pointy metal lodged in her organs?"  
The three Senshi in question flinched, and then scrambled to do as ordered, much to Mercury's growing alarm.  
"Wait! No! You can't do this! Hold oargh!" She mumbled incoherently as Asuka grabbed her by the lower jaw and inserted a spare ammo clip part-way into her mouth. "Hraughlk?"  
"To keep you from hurting yourself," Asuka explained, now starting to look slightly apologetic. "'Bite the bullet' and all that. Literally, in this case." Then she looked up at the three non-wounded Senshi. "Okay then, if you guys are even remotely squeamish, you might want to..." she trailed off as she realized that the Senshi were already looking away, their eyes squeezed shut.  
"Okay then. Time for some field surgery." With that, the Captain raised her knife.  
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"Yup. Completely undefended. Just like it said." Ranma sighed to himself as he walked through the glass double-doors into the main lab, his hands in his pockets.  
Stepping into a large, oval room, Ranma scanned the interior from left to right, immediately noticing the object in the center, but taking the time to search the premises for anything else of interest.  
Other than the metal slab in the middle of the room, there wasn't much else. A few scattered pieces of computers, scanners, and other sorts of machines that Ranma couldn't begin to identify lined the room, but overall the place looked as if it had been abandoned and looted.  
Deeming the area safe to explore, Ranma focused on the object he had seen; a single examination table with something atop it, and a white sheet to cover it up.  
Frowning, Ranma resigned himself to the obvious path of events and pulled the sheet off.  
His frown deepened. Laying on the table was a young blonde woman, or at least in appearance. She looked to be about nineteen or twenty, had her hair done in two long ponytails that were currently drawn down under her body, and was wearing an armless black bodysuit like the one Shin-Alpha usually wore into combat.  
"Well, that's just great," the pigtailed cop muttered. "Now we have blonde androids too. What is this one supposed to be? Mark seven? Eight? Feh." Ranma raised his fist, preparing to crush the thing before it got the opportunity to activate. "I think I'll take a page from Snake's book and just kill it before... wait..." he hesitated as he noticed something about the female figure's chest that had nothing to do with its two remarkably human-like breasts. It was moving slightly. As if the figure was breathing.  
Ranma lowered his fist. "Aw, hell. I think she's real. Or at least, her lungs are." He frowned again. "HEY! YOU! Wake up! Who are you! I said wake up! Time for school! Breakfast! Still nothing? Are your ears busted!" He tried picking her up by the shoulders, and started to shake her. Gently at first, but with increasing intensity. "IT'S DANGEROUS HERE! WAKE UP, ALREADY!"

_'Core preliminary tests complete. Subroutined 8-0-4 initialized.'_  
A strange voice echoed in Usagi's head, interrupting her dream about making ice cream men out of a vanilla-flavored landscape. She looked up curiously from her frosty and delicious work of art, and blinked as the blue sky that had been softly snowing powdered sugar slowly fragmented into green and white blocks, which themselves broke into smaller blocks, and even then into smaller ones. As the background of her dreamscape slowly spiralled into a mad geometrical nightmare, bright green strings of zeroes and ones suddenly poured across the fractured sky, tearing left and right madly in a senseless fury of information.  
Usagi merely stood there blinking, unable to make any sense of what she had seen, but noted that it seemed similar to a movie she had seen a while back. She went back to making her ice cream man, idly trying to remember the name of the movie.  
_'Beginning startup procedures. Respiratory, vascular, and musculatory status normal. Consciousness rebooted in 10... 9... 8...'_

_Smack! Smack! Smack!_ Ranma sighed as the blonde woman continued to sleep softly, and let go of the front of her bodysuit.  
_Clang!_ Falling backward onto the examination table, her skull smacked solidly onto the thick steel of her bed, causing Ranma to wince. She still didn't wake up, though.  
"Well, damn. Slapping her awake didn't work. Shaking her didn't work. Forcing her eyelids open did nothing. Hmmm..." he really didn't know how someone could sleep through having their eyes forced open, but this person, if she was in fact a person, had managed that.  
"One thing for sure. She's definitely not normal." He could tell as much from trying to slap her awake; her bone structure and general resilience was much tougher than any normal human being, and even himself. And when she had hit her head on the table, the impact had sounded like steel against steel.  
Ranma once again resigned himself to his fate. "Well, there's only one surefire way to wake a girl up, no matter what the circumstances are..." blushing a bit, and grimacing at the pain that was sure to follow, the pigtailed man slowly raised a shaky hand, and held it steadily over the woman's body. "Okay... here goes..."

_'2... 1... reboot complete.'_  
All at once, Usagi's dreamscape was torn apart as she felt sensation pour into her body, and jerked her eyelids open as her entire body suddenly convulsed.  
In a split second her eyes focused from blurry and muddled to perfectly sharp, a reflex that usually took at least twenty seconds. Her head felt clearer, too, without the normal weariness and confusion she normally experienced when she woke up. She could see the glare of the fluorescent lights hanging above her. She could see the individual pieces that made up the lights, since for some reason it didn't bother her at all to look directly at it. She could see the strange, disorganized pieces of machinery scattered around the room. She could see the man who was standing over her, squeezing one of her breasts...  
The pigtailed man twitched. "EVERY TIME. It literally never fails."  
Usagi, magical girl escapades aside, was a normal girl, and was subject to the normal reaction when found in such circumstances.  
"AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEE! PERVERT!" _THWACK!_  
Ranma went flying across the room from the force of the blow to his face, and his teeth rattled inside his skull as he impacted the wall hard, leaving an imprint of his body in the metal surface.  
Usagi panicked as she started looking around the room, unable find anything familiar about her surroundings. "Wh-What's going on? Where am I? What am I wearing?" She blinked. "Is this a wetsuit? Did I pass out snorkeling or something?"  
Ranma frowned as he got up, rubbing his head. On the one hand, the blonde was way too strong to be a human, confirming his earlier suspicions. On the other hand, her reaction was one of a scared and confused nineteen-year-old girl, and not a robotic killing machine on its first trial run.  
'DA policy says I should neutralize her, if not destroy her outright. Heroic and noble instincts say to help her and escape. Stupid heroism.' "Hey, are you alright?"  
Usagi jerked her head around to look at the man she had decked. 'Wha? How did that dent behind him get there? Did I do that?' Her thoughts had been moving so fast at the moment that she had not actually seen the results of her strike, and she had been able to ignore the loud crash that had accompanied them. "Who are you? What is this place?"  
"I'm Ranma Saotome. I'm with the police," Ranma explained calmly, approaching the frightened girl slowly. "You're in the middle of a bunker that was built in an old industrial scrap yard."  
Usagi gulped. "H-How did I get here?"  
Ranma shrugged. "I dunno. Me and the other officers just assaulted this bunker, and I got here first. What's the last thing you remember?"  
Usagi frowned. "I... I remember being kidnapped! That's right! There was this redheaded girl, and she had these electric claws! And then this scientist guy and this woman were talking about me, and... well... that's it."  
The pigtailed man nodded. "Uh huh. That's Shin-Alpha alright. Anyway, I'll help you get out of here... uh..." he bigsweated as the blonde narrowed her eyes at him. "S-Something the matter?"  
"Why were you... touching me?" Usagi asked suspiciously, blushing as she hugged her arms over her breasts.  
"Erm..." Ranma sweated more as he searched for an excuse that sounded better than "grabbing your boobs was the best way to wake you up". "Well, you see... it was... CPR?" He finished lamely.  
Usagi blinked. "Oh. Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry!" She shouted suddenly at the confused police officer. "You were trying to help me, and I hit you! I feel horrible!"  
Ranma sweatdropped. "Eh heh... don't mention it." 'Man, I can't believe she bought that.'  
Usagi shifted around so that her legs were dangling off the edge of the table. "Anyway, thank you for coming to rescue me! I'm... um... wait..." she frowned. 'Hey! Am I Sailor Moon right now, or Usagi?' On the one hand, she didn't remember untransforming, and she felt, to some degree, the usual rush of power and vitality that came with the magical transformation. On the other hand, she was definitely not in her usual sailor fuku, long white dress, or anything else that she had come to know as a "proper super heroine outfit".  
"I'm... er... Usagi Tsukino," she said finally, hoping that she could convince the man in front of her to keep a secret if it turned out that she was under a disguise field at the moment.  
"Okay Tsukino. Can you walk?"  
_'Startup scanning complete. Beginning subroutine and neural update upload.'_  
Usagi frowned. "You're scanning what, now?"  
Ranma blinked. "Huh? What're you talking about?"  
"You just said you had been scanning something, and you were beginning an upload," the blonde insisted.  
Ranma stared at her mutely.  
_'Update initialized. Installing all neural links and subroutines to core functions. Recommend closing all other programs while install is in progress. Press any key to continue.'_  
Usagi crossed her arms over her chest. "All right, you know what? The talking without moving your mouth thing? Yeah. A little creepy. You're a ventriloquist, fine, I get it. If this is just how you pick up chicks, you might want to rethink your approach. I mean, I already have a boyfriend, so I'm not interested, but you're cute enough that... hey, why are you backing away toward the door?"  
_'... Operating system has informed programming that core processes lack a keyboard interface. Proceeding with install automatically.'_ With that last thought ringing in her ears, Usagi's world suddenly became mush.  
Her vision went murky, with lines blurring and fading into each other. Trying to move forward off the seat, Usagi's left leg stalled in its movement, sending the blonde tumbling to the floor.  
"Hey! Tsukino! Are you okay?" Ranma quickly ran up to the obviously crazy lady, and held out a hand to try and help her up.  
Usagi twitched and jerked helplessly as she tried to make sense of her motor functions, but to no avail. She tried to wince from the pain of landing face-first on the ground, and there was a two-second delay as the sound of her hitting the floor finally reached her brain. It was horribly confusing, and Usagi grew more panicked by the second.  
"Head... dizzy... time delay... ca... n't... move..." the blonde mumbled, her mouth freezing each time she paused in a way that really creeped Ranma out.  
"Okay, okay. Just hold on." The pigtailed boy gathered the unstable woman in his arms, and then slowly lifted her up, being extra careful not to touch anything he wasn't supposed to. "I'll get you out of here. Just don't... you know, start talking back to the voices in your head or anything, okay?"  
Usagi would have complained about the implication that she was insane, but due to the apparently limited memory available to her, all she had heard was "... you... here. Just... start... the... head." She would have slapped him again due to the misunderstanding, but in the midst of the absolute chaos that had become her brain, was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  
As he started to move toward the exit, Ranma hesitated.  
"Why... st-op?" Usagi asked, her reactionary blink coming after she had finished speaking.  
Ranma twitched. "We'd better hurry. I just have a feeling... this place is gonna blow up soon."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"There! That's the last one!" Asuka sighed in relief as she slipped the last of the .50 caliber bullets from the bloody tears she had cut in the flesh, and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm.  
The three Senshi that had been struggling to hold Mercury down slowly turned around to see the results of the operation, and each one winced as they saw the blood-soaked chunks of lead.  
"So... she's gonna be okay, right?" Venus ventured cautiously.  
Asuka smirked as she took off her bloodied gloves and tossed them amongst the rest of the trash. "Yup. This gal's clean." Then she reached over to Mercury's head and gently removed the ammo pack she had placed in her patient's mouth, noting the very deep tooth marks on the clip's casing. "All done. How do you feel?"  
"Uuuunggh," Sailor Mercury moaned weakly, her eyelashes fluttering.  
The police captain kept smirking. "Don't worry, that was a good groan. Her head's so full of endorphins that she'll be out of it for a little bit." She patted the blue-skirted woman on the shoulder. "You're lucky! Apparently you're as tough as you say, so the bullets didn't get too deep below the skin! 'Magical healing' aside, we could have serious complications if I had to start cutting into vital organs to get the bullets out."

_Boom! Boom! Boom!_  
The assembled women all jerked to attention as they heard the sound of a large gun firing high above them.  
A quick search about the top of the scrap heaps found Kyle crouched atop one of them, firing his heavy autocannon down at something that was out of sight of Asuka and the Senshi.  
"Tekai!" Asuka shouted, snatching up her radio. "Report! What are you shooting at?"  
_Pssht! "It's that weapon from the alien ship! It's back! It's... gwah!"_  
The police captain grimaced as she watched a truck smash into the tip of the junk tower, knocking Kyle and a good bit of the junk into an avalanche that tumbled down and out of sight.  
The whir of gears and the shriek of metal on metal preceded the appearance of the spherical , tentacled robot from before, its metal tendrils clambering over debris and holding its main body to the ground to maximize the use of cover.  
Jupiter grinned. "Well, well. Come back for more, did yo-" she jerked back in surprise and multiple tentacles all lashed out and sped toward her, claws snapping as they tried to grab her.  
"Oh, no you don't!" Mars shouted, noticing that the majority of the appendages were either supporting the bulk of the war machine, or trying to catching Jupiter. If it needed four free arms to form a barrier screen... "**Mars flame sniper**!" She drew one hand back and released the fire arrow right at the monstrous core, which simply shifted out of the way of the projectile as it charged its own beam weapons. "Oh, fugnuts."  
_Fweeem! Kaz-z-zow!_  
Sailor Jupiter ducked under a tentacle, and then crossed her arms over her chest. "**Thunder cra**-OOF!" Her chant was interrupted as a clawed appendage rammed into her stomach, lifting her up in the air and then slamming her into a large, rusted wasted container, leaving a huge dent in the surface from the force.  
_"Unit Thunder Senshi neutralized,"_ the alien machine droned, _"threat index six. Pacification under way."_  
_Blam!_ The tentacle holding Sailor Jupiter up twitched as Asuka fired a pistol round through it, and then the segment beyond the wound fell limp, dropping the coughing woman onto the ground.  
_"Unit identified: DAPC unit, command class. Threat index five. Annihilate!"_  
Venus shouted in surprise as she and Asuka took cover behind the pillbox from a hail of disruptor bolts.  
"What the heck? How do you get a higher threat index than we do?" Venus complained, not really thinking about the implications.  
The police captain shrugged. "Practice. I've fought this thing before."  
"Good!" Mercury coughed, crawling on her hands and knees to join her cousin. "How do we kill it?"  
"'We' don't," Asuka said simply, ducking lower as a laser beam stabbed through the metal outer plating of their cover between her and the blue-skirted Senshi. "We wait until my subordinate comes back, and make him do it." She frowned. "It's strange, though. It doesn't usually take him this long to blow up an enemy stronghold. I wonder what's-"  
As if on cue, Snake appeared from the twisted hole in the lab bunker's front blast doors, running at full speed with a detonator in his hand.  
"Ah, there he is," Asuka said almost conversationally. "Remind me to reprimand him for taking so long. Oh, and DUCK AND COVER!"  
_KRAA-KA-KOOOM!_

The alien weapon quickly backed away from the detonation of its home base, its tentacles writhing around in front of it, and forming multiple energy screens to block any oncoming debris or cheap shots by its opponents who would take advantage of the confusion.  
Once the explosion had settled, the war machine took more careful stock of the situation. Apparently all but one of the six humanoids had been swept off their feet by the explosion, and it seemed that two of them were partially buried underneath the scrap thrown by the explosion. With it priorities clear, the spherical droid focused on the only standing threat.  
_"Unit identified: DAPC unit, Snake. EMERGENCY! Threat index **ten**! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!"_ The machine began to shake as its front opened up, revealing a light-blue set of gyroscopic rings that spun around each other at high speed. _"Particle cannon activated! DESTROY! DESTROY!"_  
Snake looked up at the alien device, and raised an eyebrow. Then he snatched something from his belt, and held it up in front of him while taking hold of a ring at the top.  
Asuka coughed and climbed on top of the pillbox wall to try and get her bearings. Then she saw Snake, and blinked. "Snake! What are you doing? A grenade won't... wait... that's not a grenade..."  
_Pft!_ Snake popped the tab on the can of imported Budweiser, and then started to chug it down quickly, unmindful of the large sphere of glowing blue power that was collecting right in front of him.  
Jupiter growled and tried to get her arm free, but only managed to dig a sharp corner of metal further into her bicep. "Damn! I can't move! He's gonna die!"  
_Whrrrrrrm..._ The ball of energy in the robot's core grew brighter, and its tentacles began to curl back toward the body to generate energy screens next to the energy projector's mouth, no doubt intending to protect the core from the backlash.  
"Ah!" Snake finished off the can of beer, and then crushed the container between his hands, smashing it into a thin metal disk. Then he took it up with one hand and reared it back, preparing to throw it at the behemoth he faced.  
The women watching stared in fascinated horror at this act of madness, each one wishing the foolish man peace in the next world, and hoping the particle cannon wasn't powerful enough to get any of them, too.  
Licking his lips, Snake threw the crushed can in a high arc.  
_Plink!_ The can bounced harmlessly off the robot's sensor visor, and then fell to the ground amidst the other scattered junk.  
_WHAM!_ And then the alien robot joined it, the charge in its core fading away as the entire droid lost power and crumpled to the ground.

"..."  
"..."  
"..."  
"..."  
"..."  
All the of the assembled women stared at the sight slack-jawed and eyes wide, unable to come to terms with what they just saw.  
Snake took a moment to dust off his pants, and then realized that he seemed to be the center of attention. "What?"  
Mars, who still hadn't completely recovered from being creamed by an energy beam before being buried by the destruction of the bunker, pointed to him and babbled incoherently. "You! It! Beer! Hurt! Not! Dead! Big! How!"  
The lieutenant raised an eyebrow, then pointed to the bunker. "The power's out. I blew up the generator. Those extension cords aren't there for show; that thing has the battery life of a PSP." He turned around. "I'm gonna go find Yamazaki and Chikiko. Maybe there are more targets hiding out here. Laters." Without waiting for any response from his superior, the DA's weapon specialist took off into the winding paths of the junk yard, his shotgun resting easily over his shoulder.

Jupiter grunted, still unable to move from underneath the car frame that had landed on her. "Hey! Venus! A little help, here?"  
"Huh? Oh. Okay," the blonde Senshi said, looking slightly dazed as she walked over and lifted up the key piece of scrap metal.  
No longer completely pinned, Jupiter used the extra leverage to pull her lower torso from the junk that had trapped her, though the multiple sharp edges and twisted pieces of metal made it quite painful.  
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Geez! We SERIOUSLY have to reconsider our uniform design." Getting no response from her blonde friend, the ponytailed woman snapped her fingers in front of Venus' face. "Hey! Are you all right? You didn't get shell shocked or anything, did you?"  
Sailor Venus looked right into her eyes, and smiled softly. "Jupiter... I think... I think I'm **in love**."  
_Wham!_ "Ow! Ow! OW! What sadistic monster designed this terrain?" Jupiter complained, getting up from her facefault, and removing slivers of metal from her cheek. Then she addressed the issue of her best friend apparently falling for some explosives-fetish gun-crazy American. "Girlfriend, it's been a long day. Just give it a rest, would you?"  
Venus nodded absently, but paid the thunder Senshi no mind. 'Such casual power... such control, such domination! A man who knows no fear! A foreign warrior with no equal, who would not be tamed! What a man! Today I, Minako Aino, Senshi of Venus, she who had thought to give up on true love and the idea of marriage, have found my first husband! By all the planets in the solar system, he WILL BE MINE!'

On the other side of what used to be the pillbox, Asuka and Mercury helped dig Sailor Mars out of the debris, lifting up plates of rusty scrap and piling them to the side.  
"Ugh! There! I'm out!" Mars, like Jupiter, immediately started to pick pieces of metal out of her exposed legs. "Mercury? Are you feeling better?"  
The Senshi of ice nodded, smiling. "Much better, actually. Those bullets really were the problem." Then she smiled wider at Asuka. "You were really great back there! Have you considered being a surgeon?"  
Asuka chuckled, not really used to receiving praise up-front like that. "Nah, not me. I prefer cutting up people to kill them, not save them. It's easier."  
Mars and Mercury kept smiling, though their faces darkened, and sweatdrops rolled down their heads.  
"OMIGOD!" Mars shouted suddenly, startling the other women away from their own distractions. "Usagi! Where's Usagi!" Such was her panic that she forgot to use the girl's Senshi name, apparently forgetting that Asuka wasn't part of their team.  
The other Senshis' eyes widened, and they all started panicking and shouting for Mercury to run a scan for her.  
At least, until they heard a tortured grunt from the direction of the wrecked bunker.  
"Hrrrungh..."

Ranma groaned pitifully as he crawled through the burnt, warped remains of the blast doors, his rescued hostage latched onto his back.  
While he had predicted that Snake was going to destroy the building, he had not predicted that most of the corridors in generic, non-descript laboratories look pretty much alike, and had ended up moving deeper into the lab instead of heading out the way he came. Luckily, when the blast came he had been able to shove Usagi into a corner and shield her with his own body, but that had, of course, left him looking worse for wear. Especially as it was the second time that it had happened that day. And on top of THAT, while Usagi looked like she weighed a hundred pounds, tops, whatever it was that augmented her strength and body structure had also made her more around the realm of four or five hundred pounds.  
Finally feeling the soft glow of sunlight on his burnt flesh, Ranma let out a relieved grunt as he managed to push his body over the sharp, curled metal that was the remains of the blast doors. Then, as he saw Asuka rushing toward him along with four unfamiliar and strangely dressed women, he murmured a final sentence before losing consciousness.  
"Tell... Snake that... I... hate him... ugh..."

"U... Usagi..." Venus said pensively as she approached. "I... what... WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU!"  
Mars winced at the volume, then scratched her head. "What's your problem? Other than that outfit, she looks fine."  
"Duh, that's why I had to ask!" Sailor Venus said, rolling her eyes. "I mean, they wouldn't take her and do nothing, right?"  
"Usagi? Are you okay?" Mercury said quietly, calling her by her true name like everyone else. She remembered that Usagi was supposedly transformed now, but calling her Sailor Moon at this point could only cast suspicion or confirm hunches.  
Usagi twitched, looking very disturbed. "Some...thing wrong... can't... talk right." She stumbled over the words as her friends gazed at her worriedly, though to her eyes they all looked like malformed patches of color.  
Then, suddenly, her senses snapped into order.  
_'Data install complete. Full system check complete. All programs ready. Bio-plasma generators operating at 4 capacity.'_  
Feeling her cognitive abilities and her senses return in full, Usagi frowned at the unconscious, charred man beneath her. "I thought I told you to knock it off with the ventriloquism!" Then she blinked upon receiving no response. "Ranma? Hey, Ranma? Are you okay?"  
"Get outta the way! Get outta the way!" Asuka pushed her way past Mars and shoved Usagi off of her subordinate, before leaning down and checking Ranma's pulse. "He's okay. For now." Growling at Snake's incompetence once again, she slowly picked the pigtailed man up into a fireman's carry, and started to lug him away as fast as she could. "You guys, finish up whatever you were doing here, and evacuate! We're gonna have Core and investigative forces all over this place in a few minutes! I'll catch you guys later and we can talk about that registration!"  
Not bothering to explain further, Asuka hauled Ranma's body in the general direction of where Kyle fell.

"Anyway, yeah. I'm okay. Confused, but I feel fine!" Usagi insisted, standing up and stretching.  
Mars frowned as she looked her leader over. Something about the young woman just wasn't the same... 'Did her breasts get bigger? And her hips, too, I think... It looks like she even gained an inch or two in height.'  
Sailor Jupiter gave Usagi a hug, overjoyed to have her back. "We're glad. We were really worried about how you just disappeared without telling anyone!"  
"Yeah. Stupid fanboy stalkers and their crazy fetishes," Usagi groused, causing the others to sweatdrop. "I SAID he could have a lock of my hair. He didn't have to take my whole stupid uniform."  
Then she looked up at Jupiter's face, and was alarmed to see a few green words start appearing in the space over the brunette's cheek. "Huh? Jupiter, you've got words on your face!"  
The ponytailed woman blinked. "I have what on my face?" Then she squirmed as Usagi licked her finger and rubbed it against her cheek vigorously.  
"It's not coming off! AH! Now it's on my hand!" Usagi shouted in horror, watching as more lines of text started to appear in her view.  
"Hey, wait a minute... what's going on here?" Mars questioned. She KNEW something wasn't right, and after all the trouble they had gone through to get here, she wasn't about to let anything slide.  
All fears and speculations, however, were put on hold when Sailor Mercury gulped from where she had been working with the Mercury computer.  
"Uh... guys? You're not gonna like this..."

Androids shredded: 8  
Zombies obliterated: 1 (but he's really, really, REALLY dead)  
Boomers killed in the scrap heap, thus eliminating the need to send them there: 10  
Enemy facilities destroyed: 1  
Civilian facilities destroyed: 3  
Alien robots neutralized: 1

End Chapter 2 


	3. I, Robot

"If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn to do it?" - Joan Baez

"The art of fighting and killing has evolved over the centuries just as humans have; from the fist-scraping brawls of prehistory, to the mass slaughters of medieval history, to the organized warfare of the colonial era, all the way up to the tactical combat of today. It does not worry me so much that man has such propensity and tendency for violence, but rather that our technology for killing has improved much faster than we have. I've no doubt that the nuclear bomb would have and should have been invented, but it probably would have best happened two more centuries down the road." - Seras Tuko

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen. Assuming I don't die in a horrible accident. Or go to college.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **techniques or emphasis**, 'thoughts', writing, (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 3  
I, Robot

Yoshi Konta whistled happily to himself as his supply trucks rumbled through the gate that separated Wraith Labs' on-site storage facilities from the roads that criss-crossed its properties, blissfully unaware of his companion's tension.  
Well, unaware as far as Yamiko could figure out. She never could tell if Yoshi was ignoring her because he genuinely didn't care about her feelings or because he knew it pissed her off.  
"How did the DAPC learn about the location of our lab in the first place? The speed of their assault was unbelievable!" The panicking scientist said as she carefully watched the trucks, as if afraid they might suddenly vanish or detonate.  
"I dunno," Yoshi lied casually, "maybe they followed the Senshi in there or something. In any case, we left behind plenty of traps. The difficulty they'll suffer in taking the complex is much greater than the worth of that which we left behind. Pretty much, I mean."  
"Tsk! Even so, we should have taken more precautions!" Yamiko chided. "For the Senshi to have found the facility and launched an assault by themselves... well, I had the impression they weren't so keen, tactically." Then her eyes widened. "Wait! If they tracked their comrade to the bunker, wouldn't they be able to track her here, too?"  
Yoshi continued to watch the trucks as the rear doors slid open, revealing hastily-packed arrays of machinery. "... I wouldn't worry about it."  
"How can I NOT worry about it?" Yamiko said, grasping her head. "If they followed us here, it'd be a disaster! We couldn't deploy an adequate defense without alerting defense and police stations all over the city! Wraith would be finished!"  
Yamiko began to pace back and forth as she ranted about the ultimate consequences of losing Wraith Labs as a front for the Freedom's Angels' mutant production projects, but quickly noted that the only people that were paying attention were a few of the men unpacking the lab equipment, and decided to fume quietly instead, as the laborers had dubious security clearance as far as the terrorist aspect of Wraith was concerned.  
As the men went about their work, however, a thought occurred to Yamiko, and a creeping feeling of unease began to settle in her stomach.  
"Say... Professor Konta... in which truck, exactly, did you store... 'her'?" Yamiko asked with a slightly manic edge to her voice.  
Once again, Yoshi didn't turn around, nor did his expression change as he watched the unloading of the transports. "... I wouldn't worry about it."  
"Th-This is n-no time for jokes!" the snowy-haired woman said angrily.  
"Just as well; I couldn't think of any," Yoshi said, beginning to rock back and forth on his heels.  
Yamiko twitched. "Are you telling me... that you LEFT our new cyborg back in the facility when you KNEW the enemy was coming! Are you insane! What's going to happen to her?"  
"Hard to say..." the diminutive professor mumbled, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "But I'd bet on a long stint of emotional turmoil, followed by a renewed tenure as a warrior for justice and peace and those sorts of things." He nodded firmly, as if certain in his assessment. "Either that, or the DAPC will blow her up. But that would be a shame after putting a good twenty hours into her construction."  
"INCONCEIVABLE!" Yamiko screamed, grabbing portions of her hair and gripping them tightly to keep her fingers from her superior's neck. "THOSE WERE TWENTY OF THE MOST DIFFICULT, TRYING HOURS OF MY **LIFE**! WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED IN THAT ROOM WAS AN ACT OF GODLIKE CREATION ON PAR WITH, NO, **EXCEEDING** THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST FUNCTIONAL NUCLEAR WARHEAD!" She stopped shouting in order to catch her breath, and Yoshi sweatdropped as she quickly gathered enough oxygen to continue her rant. "THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON EVER CREATED, **ANYWHERE**, UTILIZING TECHNOLOGY WE COULD BARELY OPERATE, MUCH LESS UNDERSTAND! **AND YOU JUST LEFT HER BEHIND FOR THE ENEMY TO FIND!**"  
Several more sweatdrops gathered on Yoshi's brow. "Well... I didn't 'just' leave her behind. I also left behind the alien defense drone that Yutchzky had rebuilt. You know, to guard it."  
Yamiko twitched again, this time far more violently. "Well, in that case, you have your choice: would you rather I kill you, or that General Igov do it?"  
"Oh, what's your problem anyway?" Yoshi asked, annoyed. "This is an opportunity for a much broader scope of research than the simple development of yet another killing machine to slaughter the unsuspecting public until the DAPC destroys it. The chance to observe a cyborg in an entirely different context! To collect information about a cadre of combatants utilizing MAGIC, of all things! How can we ignore the opportunities presented to us?"  
"Because it's a primary directive of our employers?" Yamiko ventured a guess through her clenched teeth.  
"Employers that will be quite upset at BOTH of us if they learn the full scope of this incident," Yoshi mentioned, crossing his arms over his chest.  
"BOTH OF US? Why should I take the rap for you?" The doctor said in surprise, taking a step back.  
"You shouldn't, really. But it's a bit of a universal quirk for terrorists: they're quite indiscriminate when it comes to placing blame, and particularly in doling out punishments." Yoshi shrugged as Yamiko paled. "So it would be best for everyone if we just kept all the details to ourselves."  
Doctor Nova frowned deeply, and stared down into the shorter scientist's eyes for a long moment.  
Finally, she sighed and massaged her head. "I really wish I could tell if your acts of monumental incompetence are genuine stupidity or incomprehensible genius."  
"Would either one make you feel any better?" Yoshi asked.  
"No, not really," Yamiko murmured.  
Yoshi shifted his eyes left and right for a moment, and confirmed that the momentary attention Yamiko had attracted by screaming at him had faded, and that the various workers were once again ignoring the pair. Then he walked close to his subordinate and raised his head up so that he could whisper to her (though he was still too short to speak directly into her ear).  
After a moment, Yamiko nodded reluctantly. "It's... better than nothing. Still, I would have much rather you simply kept her here with us."  
The tall, skinny woman crossed her arms over her chest. "No matter what your rationale for allowing her to fall into the hands of the enemy, we cannot possibly hope to recoup the loss of the alien technologies that went into her construction. In fact, I would say that the loss of the prisoner **herself**, not accounting for the possible value of the technologies, would probably be worth all such research that you..."  
Finally, the doctor realized that she was talking to herself, with no one else within earshot, and her speech trailed off as she tried to figure out where Yoshi went.  
"Hmph! Just like him to wander off when I'm talking to him. Rotten little bastard," Yamiko muttered to herself.  
"Who is bastard?" Came a deep, accented, and grammatically deficient voice from behind her, and Yamiko tensed.  
Slowly, she turned around to the expected sight of Igov Yutchzky staring down at her, and the less expected sight of Alexandra Tokima, the local commander of the Freedom's Angels, frowning at her from behind the Russian cyborg.  
"Uhm... ooh... Generals! Wh-What a pleasant surprise to see you here!" Yamiko said nervously, her expression making it clear that her surprise had not an iota of pleasure in it.  
"Is there a reason you should be surprised?" Alex asked with her eyes narrowed. "We work here, you know."  
"Well... I... that is..." The snowy-haired woman gulped. "I-Is there something I c-can help you with?"  
As soon as she finished that sentence, Igov reached forward and grabbed her arm firmly, a deep, stony frown on his face. "Igov have many questions. Konta not here, so you will do."  
"W-Wait! He's around here somewhere! Honest! He was just here! I can go find him!" Yamiko said in a panic, not feeling Igov's vise-like grip weaken in the slightest.  
"I'm afraid we're very busy people, Dr. Nova," Alex said maliciously, smirking. "We can't be running around the facility looking for certain individuals when important issues must be... resolved... immediately." Her smirk became more sadistic as she watched the scientist squirm. While she and Yamiko actually had more in common than not, this created more of a problem than a basis for friendship; as both women had superiority complexes, Alexandra hated the fact that Yamiko lorded her intellect and utility over her, and Yamiko hated the fact that Alexandra lorded her beauty and rank over **her**. That they both hated Yoshi and would have given much to see him humiliated did nothing to reconcile their struggle.  
"No! Please! I don't-ow! Stop this! Konta, this is all your fault!"  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ami, what's going on here?" Rei said impatiently, looking over the bluette's shoulder and trying to make sense of the data that was collected on the Mercury computer.  
Ami just shrugged the taller girl off. "For the last time, I'll explain what's going on when I figure out what's going on. I don't have the details yet..."  
"Well, something obviously has you bothered; can't you just tell us that?" Luna asked from the desktop where Ami worked.  
The blue-haired girl continued her work on the computer, unfazed. "No, because as soon as I give you guys a single clue, you're going to panic and start bombarding me with questions. Just give me time to get some answers, first."

Rei growled, but ultimately accepted the answer and sat down on Minako's bed next to her, fuming.  
After finding Usagi and parting with the scattered DAPC forces, the Senshi had returned to their princess' dorm room, hoping to figure out the details of her stay in a heavily guarded, automated laboratory.  
Although Ami apparently had a good idea of what was going on, she seemed to be having a great deal of trouble coming to terms with it; while she typed furiously on her computer and scanned hundreds of lines of data, the blue-haired girl constantly stopped to shake her head and mumble to herself.  
On the flip side, Usagi herself didn't seem even remotely troubled by her experience, or by the slightly disturbing after-effects. Although the green text that appeared in her view had frightened her at first, once she had settled down and started to read it, she had grown quite fond of her new trait. It seemed that after changing out of the black bodysuit she had been left with, the ponytailed girl was willing to completely forget all about her kidnapping.  
"Okay, I think I figured it out... if I squint real hard, then it appears sometimes..." Usagi squinted at a very worried-looking Makoto as the ponytailed girl held her hand gently, trying to provide the critical comfort that her poor, victimized friend really didn't seem to need.  
"Are you sure you can't remember anything else about the people that kidnapped you? They didn't tell you their names, or reveal any diabolical plans for world domination?" Makoto asked. Most of their opponents either worked for a large invasion movement, or were self-absorbed enough to reveal their carefully-laid plans to their foes through some misguided hope that the Senshi might appreciate their genius.  
"Nope. Though they did say they weren't with the government. The guy was short and geeky-looking, and the woman was tall and super-thin. And I never saw that girl with the wrist blaster thingy after she captured me." She squinted harder, and moved her face closer to Makoto, who sweatdropped.  
"And you don't know what they did to you? No idea at all?" Minako asked.  
"Well, I don't really-Ah! There we go!" Usagi grinned as rows of green text began to appear over Makoto's face in her field of vision. "It says... 'Designation: Kino, Makoto. Codename: Sailor Jupiter. Classification: Magi unit type B, elemental. Species: human.'"  
Minako shook her head. "Okay... so 'magi type B' might be new, but this 'scanning' thing doesn't really tell us anything we didn't know before..."  
"'Measurements: 87, 55, 91,'" Usagi continued.  
Makoto flushed slightly. "Wow. Well, yeah. Right on target." Then she noticed the her friends glaring at her. "What? If you want to stay in shape, then get some damn exercise!"  
"Total B.S." Rei mumbled as Usagi turned to her.  
"Hmmm... 'Designation: Hino, Rei. Codename: Sailor Mars.' Same stuff, pretty much." Then she raised an eyebrow. "'Special skills: Occult mythology and mechanics, specializing in Shinto and spiritual lore. Elemental affinity: Fire.'"  
"So, I don't get it. Is this all information that Usagi already has, and it's just reminding her?" Minako asked, hoping for Ami to tear herself away from her research and give them a hint. It didn't work.  
Luna shook her head. "I'm not sure... that 'classification' detail wasn't anything any of us knew about, or the sort of thing Usagi would make up on her own."  
"'-fighting ability average,'" Usagi continued, having kept reading while her friends were conversing. "'Other notes: Favorite color is red. Prone to jealousy and anger. Kind of a bitch.'" The blonde girl blinked, and then paled as she realized what he had just said out loud. Unfortunately, her stuttered apology was too little, too late.  
_Bwack!_  
"Owwww..." Usagi moaned, holding her head.  
After a moment, the ponytailed girl realized that Rei was moaning in pain as well, and Usagi watched, confused, as the fire Senshi cradled her hand tenderly.  
"Stupid... fuggin'... bloody..." Rei seethed as she watched her palm turn red to reflect the powerful stinging sensation. "What the hell! I knew you had a thick skull, but this is ridiculous!"  
Usagi frowned. Then the green text in front of her blinked, and the words "kind of" disappeared from Rei's scan profile.  
"How did YOU hurt yourself?" Makoto asked, remembering all the times in the past that Rei had clocked their princess on the head without any trouble.  
"I don't know! It felt like I was striking metal or something!" Rei complained.  
"Maybe it's karma?" Minako ventured.  
"Karma doesn't give you the bone density of granite," Rei said irritably, glaring suspiciously at her princess.

By this time Usagi had gotten over Rei's behavior and the unusual results, and had turned her attention to Minako, this time keeping quiet as she read the information that spontaneously appeared before her.  
'Hmmm... same thing. Name, superhero name, elemental type... light? I thought Minako was supposed to use love.' After a moment of thought, Usagi decided it made sense; she really had no idea what love looked like or did when it was summoned into a corporeal energy state, but the **Crescent Moon Beam** probably wasn't it.  
Her scan reached the point where it brought up miscellaneous notes about the subject, and Usagi winced. 'Emotional baggage from first serious relationship. Shallow and irrational. Total slut.'  
'That's not very fair... let's change it to...' with a moment of concentration, the final two sentences winked out, and were replaced with Extremely affectionate. Slightly bipolar.  
As scanning her friends was getting boring, Usagi turned and stared intently at Luna, who herself was trying to make sense of what Ami was looking at on the Mercury computer.  
Designation: Lunaris Samuran Johain  
Usagi blinked at that, and gave the glowing green text even more attention as it appeared.  
Codename: Luna. Classification: Psychic unit class E. Species: Unknown. Feline biology is questionable.  
The moon princess scratched her head, which seemed odd to the others since she was simply staring at Luna.  
Then Usagi concentrated, and the entry for "Species" vanished, only to be replaced with "Moon cat." 'Heck, I don't know if it's an actual species, but it's not like I really care, either. Hey, what time is it?'  
In response to her mental query, a digital readout saying 7:04 flashed near the top of her field of vision, appearing in the same green text as her scan data.  
"Oh! Hey! The news is on! Let's see if they mention us!" Usagi said excitedly, scooting over to where the TV was.  
"Uh... I don't think we're gonna get mentioned," Makoto said uncertainly. "Those police officers told us to leave before any other officials got there, and it was in an isolated area... the battle might not even make the news at all."  
"Oh! Speaking of police officers, wasn't that guy who carried me out of the lab just dreamy?" Usagi said as she searched the coffee table for the television remote. "He was really nice, too! Just a bit showy with his ventriloquism act."  
"Uh... I guess," Minako mumbled, trying to recall the man's face. It was difficult, as that particular cop had been singed black at the time and had fainted in front of them. Not a very manly first impression, though in context he had been quite heroic in rescuing Usagi. "Personally though, I dig that guy with the shotgun! He was SO cool!"  
"It WAS kind of neat the way he made it look like he destroyed that robot guardian with a beer can," Rei admitted, "but I'd still have to say he was creepy and insane."  
"Seconded," Makoto said, causing Minako to pout.  
"Thirded," Ami mumbled, causing Minako to frown.  
"Fourth... uh... ed," Usagi said, stopping momentarily in her search.  
"Hey! You didn't even see him!" Minako said accusingly.  
"Eh heh heh... sorry. Just wanted to join in," Usagi said apologetically. "Hey, have you seen the remote? I need to turn on the TV."  
_Click!_ Before anyone in the room could offer any hints as to where the remote control was, the television suddenly switched on, seemingly of its own accord.  
Everyone but Ami blinked in surprise.  
Usagi frowned. "Okaaaay... well, can someone hand me the remote anyway? I need to change the channel."  
_Click!_ The television went up a channel, changing from a game show to a sporting event.  
"No, no! Further than THAT!" Usagi said, this time addressing the TV directly.  
_Click!_ The television went up five channels this time, showing an older episode of Inu-Yasha.  
"It's channel forty-three! Forty-three!"  
_Click!_ Immediately a weatherman appeared on the screen, and continued his explanations of the current weather patterns.  
Usagi nodded in satisfaction, and then froze, finally coming to same realization that her friends had.  
Makoto gulped. "Is... Is it... SUPPOSED to do that?"  
Rei leaned forward hesitantly. "Mute," she commanded to the television. Predictably, the volume remained the same.  
Usagi scratched her head, and then shrugged. "Mute."  
All sound from the TV ceased, and Rei twitched.  
"Amiiiii," Minako whined, "this is starting to get scary! Hurry up and tell us what's going on!"  
"If you find her working the TV without pushing any buttons unsettling, then you're not even close to ready for what I have here," Ami muttered, finally turning away from the Mercury computer.  
"Why? Is she gonna be okay?" Makoto asked, wringing her hands as the tension increased even further.  
"As far as I can tell, Usagi is in no danger," Ami said slowly, scrubbing her hair with her hands and avoiding eye contact with the subject in question. "That said, I think the best way to begin is..." she pursed her lips, and finally stared Usagi right in the eyes. "Usagi-chan... you've been... changed. Physically altered. The people who kidnapped you didn't just experiment on you or study your body; they ripped your body apart and reconstructed you."

Usagi blinked. Twice.  
"Oh. Huh." Then she stared down at her arm, and flexed her fingers experimentally. "Well, they did a pretty good job then, huh?"  
Ami massaged her head. "A 'pretty good job' doesn't even begin to describe the scope of what they've accomplished here," she said wearily, somewhat pleased that Usagi seemed unable to comprehend the vast implications of what she was saying. Best for her to absorb it a little bit at a time.  
"Well, I look the same, don't I?" Usagi asked, looking around at her friends. "I mean, you guys would have told me if I had weird stitches or scars or bolts in my neck, right?"  
"Uh, yeah. It's nothing like that," Rei said cautiously, "though you do look... bigger."  
"Bigger!" Usagi shouted, alarmed. "What? Bigger how? Where? Are you saying I gained weight? I haven't eaten a single thing since I was kidnapped yesterday morning!"  
"Weight is an issue we'll discuss much, much later," Ami deadpanned. "But Rei-chan's right. You've gained about five centimeters in height, and your shoulders are broader and about eight centimeters wider. There are other differences, but they're even less significant. It seems clear to me that these differences in form have been minimized to make you look as close as possible to how you looked before you were taken; the only reason WE can notice them at all is because we've known each other for so many years while we were growing up, and even then we probably wouldn't think anything of it in a different situation."  
"Hmmm... well, there's one other 'significant' change," Makoto said, smirking as she suddenly grabbed Usagi's right breast. "Looks like someone broke the 'C' barrier!"  
"Yeep! Hey! Leggo!" Usagi said, flushing deeply as she swatted Makoto's hand away.  
"If we can be serious for a moment..." Ami asked irritably. She recognized that her friends were trying to keep a lighter mood to soften the news that was eventually going to hit them, but the more they fooled around, the harder it was going to be for her to explain the situation properly. "Those are the changes as far as appearance goes. As you might have guessed by now, this matter is not skin deep." She took a deep breath. "Usagi-chan, you're no longer human. When they reconstructed you, they put you back together with machinery, not organs. You're a cyborg."  
There was a long, awkward pause as Usagi and the others stared at Ami, who stared back pensively.  
"Bwa ha ha ha! That's great!" Usagi suddenly said, holding her stomach as she shook with laughter. "Pft! A **cyborg**? Come on! Turning on the TV without the remote doesn't make me the Terminator! You've been playing too many games!"  
"Heh heh... uh... yeah... there's no way... heh..." Minako said, her own withering chuckles not nearly so confident. Makoto and Rei also gave half-hearted snickers, each of them quite certain that Ami wasn't taking this opportunity to play a practical joke.  
Ami shook her head, expecting a reaction like this. "Usagi-chan, when Rei hit you, she felt like she hit metal because now your skull IS metal. Your entire skeleton has been replaced by a high-grade titanium alloy."  
Usagi rolled her eyes. "Get real! When she hit me it hurt! If I was a robot I wouldn't be able to feel pain, right?"  
The others blinked in surprise at Usagi making a completely rational, valid point instead of panicking or simply denying it. Apparently she was taking this as calmly as she appeared.  
"And look at me! I don't have any robot arms or anything! My skin feels the same! There's no way!" Usagi smirked, her arms crossed over her chest as she waited for Ami's inevitable admission of error.  
"I realize that these people that kidnapped you did an unbelievable job in what they did; I can't fathom how they managed this in twenty-four hours." Ami turned back to the Mercury computer. "And they're using technology that's totally unfamiliar to Earth science. Personally, I doubt that whoever took you was even human."  
"Hello? Not answering the question? Pain? Skin? Robot? How?" Usagi asked, getting annoyed that Ami was keeping up with this silly idea of hers.  
"You're not a robot, you're a cyborg," Ami explained, turning her head away from the computer screen. "Meaning that your natural body has been combined with cybernetic parts. Like I said, most of your body has been replaced by machinery, but most of your nervous system and all of your reproductive organs have been preserved, even though they're now supported by machines rather than the circulatory and respiratory organs. Your skin might feel normal, but it's really an advanced thermo-reactive polymer that your nerves have been threaded into. You can feel pain, and you still have a sense of touch. In fact, you still possess all the senses you had as a human. But the fact remains that you have more metal in you than a pickup truck."  
Before Usagi could offer another protest or the others could bombard her with questions, Ami hit a button on the Mercury computer and then picked it up to show it to her audience.  
"Look. I've done dozens of scans of you up and down, and this is what I found. These are some of the reconstructions of what you look like inside."  
The others frowned at the image. The computer screen was broken into nine different frames, each one with a different image of a human-shaped mass of metal pieces. Close inspection revealed that every image was different, with different configurations of tubes and wires and cylinders in certain places where there should have been a metal hand or elbow. The only things that were constant in all the pictures were the head, the web of nerves strung over and through the machines, and her breasts, which were, when stripped of their soft outer layer, a pair of glowing green orbs threaded with wires and more nerves.  
"Wait, whoa, hey. This doesn't make any sense," Makoto pointed out. "Which one is supposed to be Usagi?"  
"ALL of them are. And there are probably more," Ami said irritably. "This is the most prominent example of technology that couldn't have possibly been developed normally here on Earth. There's some kind of energy field surrounding her which keeps most of the machines 'tucked away' in a sort of dimensional pocket, even though they occupy the same quantum space. When the field is altered, different points of the body access their alternate mass wavelengths, and allow... uh..." She trailed off once she noticed Minako was starting to look dizzy, and that the others weren't much better. "Well, in layman's terms, there's more machinery in Usagi's body than there is space to keep it. When those devices are needed, they replace whatever devices are not needed using dimensional pockets not unlike the ones we use for item storage."  
"So this is Silver Millennium technology?" Luna asked hopefully.  
"Not even close," Ami said firmly. "Silver Millennium technology of this complexity usually utilizes machines to activate magic constructions. The machines making up Usagi are pure metal and computers, and though I couldn't even begin to reverse-engineer it, the device that's maintaining the dimensional folds clearly uses physics... well, insofar as it's used to violate physics, anyway. Most of the other technologies are actually mundane devices consistent with Earth's current technological process, but the rest are, again, centuries ahead in energy manipulation and transmission. As far as I can tell, Usagi still has all the magical properties she did before she was kidnapped though; that aspect hasn't been altered."  
"Th-This is crazy!" Usagi said, starting to become upset as Ami made her case. "I'm not a cyborg! I'm still me!"  
"Well, yeah. Of course you're still you," Minako said reassuringly, squeezing Usagi's shoulder. "Now you're just... you with satellite radio!"  
"This isn't really the time for your stupid jokes!" Rei snapped.  
Ami sighed. "No, she's right. I've isolated the radio transmitter here," she said, pointing at one of the images. "And directly below it here is a broadband router. She's got an entire media center hardwired into her frontal lobe."  
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!" Usagi said, clamping her hands over her ears and shaking her head. "This isn't right! It can't be true!"  
"Simply denying it isn't going to solve anything." Rei said firmly. "We have to figure out who did this and why."  
"But it's not true!" The ponytailed blonde cried. "Ami's wrong! I'm not a cyborg!"  
Makoto chewed her lip anxiously, well aware that they were on sensitive ground in respect to Usagi's emotional stability. "Well... the evidence is right here... I mean, can you prove she's wrong?"  
"Prove it? How am I supposed to prove it if she says I act and feel the same?" Usagi said hotly. "How? Am I supposed to open up my stomach and show you my insides?"  
_Shoompf! Rip!_ Two hinged sections of Usagi's abdominal flesh suddenly separated and opened up, tearing her shirt down the middle and revealing, in the middle of an open cavity lined with what appeared to be steel mesh and wiring, a large glass cylinder where Usagi's stomach and intestines should have been, glowing a bright green as it maintained its contents of hot plasma.  
A moment of silence ensued as each girl (and feline equivalent) took the time to digest this bizarre occurrence at their own pace.  
Then, at some unspoken but universally accepted signal, they commenced freaking out.  
"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What the hell is this? How did this happen!" Gritting her elongated, pointed teeth as she ran down the street, the young brunette dashed through the oncoming traffic, ignoring shouts and blaring horns as she weaved in and out of the late-afternoon traffic along one of Tokyo's major streets.  
"Get out of the streets! You're just slowing yourself down!" Shouted a redheaded teenage boy who ran parallel to her on the sidewalk, sprinting at a speed slightly beyond human potential as he carelessly plowed through the sparse crowds of people who had not yet detected that anything was wrong.  
Within seconds, the redheaded boy had gained a significant lead, though his path was marked with a straight line of pedestrians knocked down or out of way, whereas the girl's path was filled with swerving vehicles.  
The importance of this difference became apparent as Snake burst out of the alleyway that the two teenagers had emerged from, immediately twisting as he slid into a crouch to aim his heavy rifle straight down the line that the boy had created through the local innocent bystanders. 'Checkmate, bloodsucker.'  
"Kisuke! Look out!"  
The youth's mind, not being quite as swift as his legs, didn't register the threat until it was too late. A 20 mm. round bored mercilessly into his back, obliterating his spine and the contents of his ribcage as it pitched him forward, adding its own formidable momentum to his own.  
The report of the rifle, left behind in the dust by its projectile, reached the boy's ear a split second later, followed a second after that by screams and shouts as he continued his impromptu flight, a wash of blood bursting behind him.  
Though it seemed like an eternity to the mortally wounded teenager, only two more seconds passed before his face reached the concrete, and the local bystanders began to actively flee in all directions as the youth skidded along the sidewalk, leaving a trail of smeared blood behind him.

The girl almost stopped her own progress in shock and horror at seeing her companion dispatched so cleanly, but her own sense of self-preservation dictated sense. The same sense that had her weaving back and forth in traffic, and leaving a mess of large, hard targets between her and her pursuers.  
"Damn it! Damn it all!" She shouted, hot tears coming from her eyes as she fled. 'I'll make them pay! The sun is almost down! Once dusk passes...'

Snake quickly gave up trying to get a bead on the second target, and spent a moment admiring the teenage girl's tactical sense in utilizing civilian shields.  
Ignoring the outraged shouts of the bystanders around him, Snake casually jogged up the trail of blood his victim had left behind, holding his rifle comfortably at an angle as he approached.  
"You there! What's going on?" A police officer yelled. While the man had been ready to stop and interrogate the two youths who were plowing through pedestrian and vehicular traffic, seeing one of those youths shot in the back was quite enough to distract him from jaywalking and battery.  
Seeing the police officer slow down upon approaching (Snake was armed, after all, and the cop was not), Snake just smirked. "Don't worry about it. I'm DAPC."  
While the officer had guessed that the American was another protector of the peace, learning the name of his department did nothing to keep him from worrying. "What the hell is this about? Why on Earth did you shoot this boy?"  
The American passed by the other officer and stopped about two meters from the prone, blood-stained body, ignoring the man behind him. "Yo. Wakey wakey, kiddo."  
"What's wrong with you!" The police officer shouted, furious. "You just blasted that child's chest out! He's not waking up, ever!"  
Snake raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. "Oh. Good point. Well then, I guess I'll just turn around and carelessly leave my vulnerable, unprotected back to my enemy's corpse..."  
The officer and the surrounding bystanders that had stayed to watch stood flabbergasted, wondering why the man would elicit such a statement. Especially when they could clearly see he wasn't turning around at all.  
It was a vantage point that the redheaded youth would have enjoyed greatly, as he didn't realize that Snake was lying until after he had twisted around to his feet and lunged for his pursuer, mouth wide open and pointed, dagger-like teeth elongated for a single killing bite.  
"Hmph. Kids these days. They'll fall for anything," Snake mumbled as he smashed the butt of his rifle into the wounded vampire's open mouth, sending the undead youth sprawling back onto the concrete.  
Ignoring the disbelieving gasps of the surrounding crowd, Snake slipped his rifle under his right arm and drew his sidearm with his left. "Honestly. Just tell 'em you're open, and they'll attack. Hell, some kids are so stupid that they'll even fall for stuff like 'eternal life' and 'immortality'. Ha!"  
The severely wounded youth choked, spitting out thick wads of blood and bits of his own pointed teeth. "P-Please! Don't _Hack!_ kill me! M-M-Mercy! _Cough!_" The redhead tried to crawl away, and squeaked in pain as Snake stepped on his ankle, stopping him from making even negligible progress.  
"Mercy? Huh." Snake raised an eyebrow as he pointed his pistol at the boy's head. "Tell me something, bloodsucker: do your victims ever beg for mercy before you eat them? Probably, huh? You ever grant it? I mean, what if it's a woman? Or just a kid? A little kid younger'n you, who's never done anything to anybody? You ever spare a life?"  
Cough! Cough! "I... but I... p-please..."  
_Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!_

Atop one of the nearby office buildings, Ranma glanced back at the street scene just as Snake finished off his target.  
"Hmph. Let him suffer, I see. Typical." While the pigtailed cop didn't really approve of Snake's morbid love for violence (very few people did), he had to admit that in the case of hunting the dead, cruelty was probably something of a gray area in the field of ethics.  
"The chick's not making much progress. Still, it's enough to keep Snake off her tail for a bit." Ranma wasn't very well versed in fighting vampires yet, but he knew that the daylight weakened them severely, and that few vampires would fight while the sun was still up. The dim light of dusk was less of a problem, as evidenced by the girl's slowly increasing speed, but she would only make a stand once night had fallen.  
Shaking his head, Ranma reached down to his calf and withdrew the wakazashi strapped to his shin. "Fine. We'll play that game." After confirming the brunette's trajectory, Ranma jumped down to the nearest fire escape.  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ami sighed deeply, and popped open her second can of beer in eight minutes.  
"Uhm... Ami-chan," Makoto began hesitantly.  
"Shut up," Ami said, lacking such hesitation. Then she took a long sip of her beverage, relishing in the bitter taste that promised to drown her senses in a pleasant fog of chemical inebriation.  
The dorm room was solemn at the moment, nobody having really recovered enough nerve to restart the discussion after seeing Usagi's stomach open up like that. Minako was mumbling to herself as she laid back on her bed, Rei was pacing the length of the room, Luna was staring at the pictures on the Mercury computer in disbelief, and Usagi herself was curled up in the fetal position on the floor, taking deep, wheezing breaths as she kept her arms wrapped tight around her abdomen. The others had actually been afraid at first that she was going to hyperventilate, but then Ami reassured them that Usagi's new respiratory systems would easily compensate. Which was good to know, but brought back the uncomfortable reality of the immediate situation.  
Makoto turned away from Ami, and noted that the others really weren't coping any better than the genius Senshi, though their methods were at least healthier.  
"Guys? What are we going to do about this? I mean..." Makoto pursed her lips as she noticed that Rei was the only one giving her any attention. "We can't just do nothing, right? We have to take action..."  
"Sure we can do nothing," Ami murmured between gulps. "Usagi-chan's faster, stronger, and more resilient than ever, and whether or not she gets used to the side-effects, there's absolutely nothing we can do to about them."  
Rei frowned and stopped her pacing. It wasn't like Ami to be so cynical. Then again, it wasn't like Ami to be chugging alcohol either, and besides Usagi, the situation HAD placed most of the stress squarely upon the genius Senshi. "But Ami-chan, can't you-"  
"No," Ami said firmly. "I can't. I'm not a scientist. Or an engineer. Or a doctor. Yet, anyway." She slammed back the rest of the beer and flung the can into the garbage bin next to her feet. "You haven't been studying these scans for as long as I have, so please take it from me that the extent to which Usagi has been altered is far, far, FAR beyond any kind of reversal. And I'm saying that nobody on this green Earth can do it, with all the money and equipment and specialists you could dream of. No way am I going to attempt anything like that by myself with the Mercury computer and a scalpel in the school infirmary."  
Rei wasn't about to give up, however. "Wait, you also said that what's been done to her should have been impossible in the first place."  
Ami blinked, not expecting a reasoned rebuttal. "Well... yeah. I mean, this level of cybernetic conversion wouldn't even work on normal humans because it damages the body so extensively. The only reason Usagi survived is our Senshi healing powers; as long as a few key organs remain intact, we can survive nearly any level of trauma."  
This got Luna's attention. "So whoever did this to her needed a Senshi to experiment on?"  
"You're sort of losing perspective here," Ami mumbled, "a project of this magnitude would probably take dozens of people, months of planning and design work, and an expansive research program. They didn't just need a Senshi to complete this project; they had to have based this project around the conversion of a Senshi to begin with." The bluette massaged her head. "And then to utilize this much foreign technology, integrate it with standard Earth tech, and all in a day... I'm telling you, it IS impossible!"  
"Not impossible enough, since it happened," Rei said decisively. "And if that's the case, maybe the same people that did this to her can undo it."  
Suddenly, a soft, hopeful voice emerged from the corner of the room. "So... you think... if we can find that little guy..." Usagi slowly pushed herself up so that she was sitting on her legs, no longer clutching her stomach.  
Rei smiled softly. "Hey, maybe not, but it's worth a shot, right?" Then her soft smile vanished and she smacked a fist into her hand menacingly. "Besides, we need to get the bastard back for doing this to you in the first place anyway. One way or another, he's going to pay for this."  
Usagi sniffled as she stared up at her raven-haired friend adoringly.  
Then, with a stray thought, she brought up Rei's scan information into her field of vision, erased any trace of the word "bitch", and added "the bestest friend ever!"  
"Well, it would help if we had any clue who was behind this in the first place," Minako mumbled, finally coming out of her own stupor.  
Ami rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Okay, here are the facts. This enemy obviously knows at least Sailor Moon's secret identity. Their forces show no aptitude for any kind of magical power, but command advanced technology instead. They're obviously willing to use force without provocation to achieve their ends. Also, and this is most puzzling, after going through all that trouble to kidnap and convert Usagi, they just left her alone in their lab with a formidable but entirely defeatable compliment of guards."  
"I can't think of any enemies or military forces at all from the Silver Millennium who didn't use SOME magical energy to assist their forces," Luna said, "most common technologies had a basis in mana. Hyperdrives, energy shields, even most power generators."  
"Is it possible we're not facing an enemy of the Silver Millennium at all?" Makoto ventured. "I mean, Rei said that the robots we fought in the junk yard were the kind that terrorists use, right?"  
"Mundane terrorists?" Ami said, snorting. "Mako-chan, our best doctors all over the world are years away from coming up with a cybernetic replacement for the most common organs that need replacing. And you expect me to believe that **terrorists** somehow managed to reconstruct an entire human respiratory and circulatory replacement system?" Ami shook her head. "Let me make something clear: Outside of my video games and our princess, those kinds of cyborgs just don't exist."  
Rei walked over to the nightstand that held her purse, withdrew a folded sheet of paper, and then brought it over to Ami's desk.  
_Slam!_ Slapping it flat on the plastic surface, Rei raised her hand to reveal an image of a Russian man in a trench coat with one eye covered by an optic peripheral, and one arm replaced with a Gatling gun that was caught in the act of blazing away at a police barricade.  
"Igov Yutchzky. Russian fugitive General. Also, some people might call him a cyborg," Rei said smugly, crossing her arms over her chest. "You know, with the eye and the gun arm and all."  
Ami frowned. "This doesn't prove anything. They have better screenshots in EGM."  
"This isn't a screenshot! This is a news article!" Rei shouted.  
"Oh, so what? Having a gun grafted onto your arm doesn't make you bloody Robocop. This doesn't mean anything."  
A vein popped up on Rei's head. "Well, do you have any better leads?"  
"And you want to start hunting down terrorists on a 'lead'?" Ami asked skeptically. "We're the Sailor Senshi, not the marines. How do you expect to take monster-hunting skills to fighting ordinary men with guns?" She rubbed her side tenderly, remembering the feeling of hot bullets riveting her flesh. "It's not going to be pretty. For either side."  
"We have to try, don't we?" Makoto asked, balling her hands into fists.  
"I'm not saying we give up, but think this through, already!" Ami said harshly. "If you chase down a man with pistol into an alleyway and he turns, what are you going to do? Obliterate him with your lightning powers?"  
Makoto blinked. "Uh... well... I guess, if-"  
"You can't 'I guess' this issue," Ami retorted, wagging a finger at her. "Hesitation means lead in your gut. Until now, we've been dealing on a strictly 'save humans, destroy monsters' basis. That's not going to be an option here. If we take this path, the best we can hope for is that all the people we kill will deserve it. But we WILL have to kill people."  
The others fell silent, none of them able to respond to that. Mentally, each of the Senshi reflected upon the dramatic change in the normally meek girl's attitude, and each one contemplated purging the dorm fridge of alcoholic beverages over the weekend.  
The bluette sighed. "It's been a hard day. Why don't we sleep on it for now? We'll be better prepared to deal with it tomorrow."  
The others nodded, except for Usagi, who grimaced. "Sleep? Do I even sleep anymore? Or do you just plug me into the wa-" She stopped talking as the now-familiar green text returned to her scope of vision. Sleep mode engaged. Good night. "Sleep mode? What do you-"  
_Thud!_ Usagi fell forward onto the carpet, breathing softly as her eyes closed tight.  
The others stared.

"Wow. She really hasn't changed at all on the outside, has she?" Minako asked.  
"No. And that worries me." Ami said, massaging her head. "Anybody who would kidnap her out of the blue and perform such an extensive operation on her has to have malevolent intent. WHY would they do all this to her without installing any means to control her? I've analyzed the readouts; Usagi's packed to the gills with all sorts of dangerous weapons. If she was to return to us, the most obvious turn of events would be her fighting against the people that changed her in the first place. Even if we hadn't secured her, without any means of controlling her actions, she would have eventually turned against her creators, assuming that they weren't just going to keep her contained indefinitely after going through all the work of converting her."  
Minako gulped. "Are... are you **sure** she's not being controlled? I mean, maybe she's just acting like herself to catch us off-guard."  
"Fact: anyone with the resources to capture Usagi in the first place probably has the resources to find out our identities, if they don't already know. Once they were to find out, we only stay alive so long as we're willing to abandon our lives as we know it to hide somewhere in our Senshi forms." Ami shook her head. "We're not soldiers, and this is no fortress. It would be very easy to plant a bomb in a dorm room, or even hire a hitman to enter the school and shoot us all before we have a chance to transform."  
"Thanks for the comforting thoughts," Rei said irritably, shuddering.  
"Anyway, enemy control was one of the first things I checked for. I can assure you that Usagi's brain is functioning the same as it ever has."  
"Which is to say, not very well," Luna said tiredly. Rei glared at the moon cat for stealing her line.  
"Sure. As I was saying, while there is a large computerized peripheral around the top of her brain, lining the skull, it doesn't seem to be transmitting any data into the neural cortex. Rather, it's mostly receiving data from her brain and sending data to other parts of the body. It was this piece that took Usagi's verbal requests and activated other parts of the body, such as her remote transmitter and her stomach hatch."  
"So... she has to call out what kind of device she wants to use in order to use it?" Minako asked. Her mind conjured an image of Usagi in her Senshi uniform, shouting "Go, go, rabbit legs!" and jumping hundreds of feet into the air.  
"I seriously doubt that," Ami deadpanned. "Until recently, Usagi didn't even know that these devices were inside of her. I'm sure that with some time she'll learn to use them via mental command, just like her normal limbs. I've checked the programming in the computer network extensively, and I can't find any signs of any pre-programmed behavioral scripts or command directives. From what I can see, the computer can neither take over Usagi's brain, nor would it know what to do with her brain if it did gain control. It exists entirely to store hard data and programs for the more advanced devices that Usagi wouldn't be able to use by herself, like her scanners."  
"I see. Sort of," Makoto said, scratching her head. It seemed clear that this was Ami's territory, and even the resident genius seemed totally defeated by the situation. "Well, I'm going to go to bed. I guess we can pick up on this tomorrow."  
"Yeah, me too," Rei mumbled, being the only other person who didn't live in their immediate surroundings. "Though I don't know if I'll get much sleep. It's stuff like this that tends to keep you awake at night, y'know?"  
Makoto nodded glumly as she followed Rei to the door. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I wonder if there's anyone out there with a worse job than us."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ranma wiped some of the blood and pus off of his arm as he cleanly decapitated the last ghoul in front of him, not bothering to watch the headless corpse slump to the ground below.  
"Yech. I hate this part," Ranma mumbled under his breath, shaking his hand. The ghouls had obviously been freshly turned, recent victims, which displeased Ranma greatly. Not only could these people have been saved with a day's more notice, but the liquids in their bodies hadn't had much time to congeal yet, and were still well-preserved inside the body, which meant a lot of bloodspray as he tore through their vital organs.  
'The targets will be expecting any intruder to either shoot the guards, or die fighting them by hand. Idiots.'  
Jumping up onto the side of the adjacent building, Ranma grabbed hold of a window sill, preparing to scale the wall to gain a better vantage point on his enemy.

_Bwack!_ The teenage brunette fell backward at the force of the backhand, and held her hands in front of her protectively as the two larger men approached menacingly.  
"Idiot! What the hell is wrong with you?" The first one asked, a man with a bleached crew cut and several flaming skull tattoos all over his arms.  
The second man, who had his green hair in a long ponytail, shook his head. "Fighting in the daylight... even in an alley, just before dusk... it was foolish."  
"Hell, screw 'foolish'!" The first man said, revealing huge, dagger-like canines as he growled at the teenage girl. "It was stupid! But stupid as it was, what's wrong with you losers? You're telling me that you couldn't take two cops down in an enclosed space when there were three of you? Even if it wasn't night, as long as you were out of the sun you should've thrashed them!"  
"Y-You don't understand!" The brunette begged. "We tried! But they were too fast, and, and, they shot Yusuke!" She shuddered as tears started to leak from her eyes. "It was unbelievable! One shot, in mid-lunge, and his head was just... just... gone! No way can we survive that! And then they got Kisuke!"  
"Shut up!" _Thwack!_ The girl went flying again as the tattooed vampire smacked her across the face. "It's your own damn fault! You think you're invincible just 'cause you got fangs? If you miserable brats keep causing trouble and stirring up the locals, people are gonna catch on, and then WE'RE the ones being hunted! We never shoulda turned you!"  
"N-No! Please! I'm sorry!" The brunette said, tears streaming down her face.  
"You DO wish to be a vampire, do you not?" The second man said, his face cold. "Personally, I believe that you may represent too great a risk to leave undead. If you cannot avoid attention, and cannot fight off local authorities, then you are truly useless to us."  
"Yes! Yes, I do want to be a vampire! Please!" The girl begged. "I can't go back to the way I was! I hate being human! I can be useful! I'll do anything!"  
"Of course you will," the first vampire said, grinning as he took her by the arm. "And you'll be doing anything all day tomorrow with me." He licked his lips, his long, thick tongue sliding over dagger-tipped teeth. "You're lucky. If it had been either of those pricks to survive, we'd just kill 'em. But since you're a girl, there's one way you can always be 'useful' to us."  
The girl's eyes widened as realization dawned on her, but she did not reject the proposition, or offer any resistance. After all, for one such as her, who had already sacrificed her humanity and her living breath, being violated sexually in exchange for continued life was trivial; there was even the chance that she would enjoy the encounter, and she embraced it greedily as relief washed over her at being spared.

"Hey, Garo! Get those lunkheads in the back over here! We're goin' back to the club!" The tattooed vampire shouted to his companion.  
The ponytailed man nodded, then frowned. "This is... alarming. I think they've been dispatched."  
The larger vampire stopped dead. "What? Whaddya mean?"  
"I can no longer sense my link to them at all. They've been destroyed."  
The tattooed man turned back to the horrified teenager, his eyes glowing a bright, bloody red. "You idiot! Did you lead them back to us!"  
"No! No, I swear I lost them!" the girl insisted. "There's no way! Nobody can track a vampire through the dark! Nobody!"  
"I can." _Shnk!_  
The ponytailed man's eyes bugged out as a short sword burst from his neck, accompanied by a short spray of blood and his gargled scream.  
The other two vampires whirled around, and their red eyes widened as they saw a pigtailed man standing calmly behind their green-haired companion, holding the wakazashi that had pierced his throat.  
"Seriously, you guys are always all 'nobody can do this to a vampire! Nobody can do that to a vampire! Vampires are better at everything!' It gets a little sad after a while, y'know?" Ranma shook his head. "You're no survivalist, lady. A boy scout could've followed you here. Just because you're dead doesn't mean people can't pick up on clues like parked cars with dents on top, knocked-over garbage cans, and a whole line of eyewitnesses. Moron."  
The girl paled, and the tattooed man began to grind his unnaturally sharp teeth.  
"Okay, fine. You found us. You're also all alone, meatbag," the larger vampire said, stepping forward and balling his hands into fists. "Oh, and you can't kill Garo like that. Don't you know anything about vampires?"  
Ranma shrugged. "Well, I don't know much. Fighting vampires is new to me," he admitted, "but I'm learning, bit by bit. For example..."  
The pigtailed cop finally pulled his short sword out of the vampire's neck, and then nodded as the ponytailed man tumbled onto the ground helplessly.  
"Gk! Ca... Can't... I can't move..."  
Ranma nodded again. "Just as I thought. Vampire's bodies still work a lot like human ones; nerves activate muscles, and muscles move limbs. Sever the spine and you guys can't move your bodies."  
_Wwwsh!_ Ranma ducked as the tattooed vampire clawed at his head, and then landed an open-palm strike to his chest, knocking him away. "Of course, for a vampire that's still not much damage to heal, meaning I'll have to finish your friend off soon."  
"The only one dyin' here is YOU!" The leader of the group snarled, leaping forward again to try and tackle the nimble police officer.  
Ranma met the tackle head-on, and then twisted his body around as his assailant tried to get any kind of grip, using the undead man's own momentum to throw him into the adjacent wall.  
_Crack!_ Concrete shattered around the vampire's body as he met the alley wall face-first, but even this amount of force barely stunned the man, and he pushed off the wall immediately to rejoin the fight.  
Ranma blocked a desperate slash from the brunette behind him as he waited for the leader to return, and then swept her feet out from under her at a speed the younger vampire simply couldn't match. "I swear. Vampires, cyborgs, mutants, super-humans, you guys are all the same." He dodged backward as a lightning-fast punch whizzed by his head, and then backflipped away to gain some distance. "Just because you're tougher and stronger than a human, you assume that's the only advantage you'll need to measure up in a fight. There's more to it than that, dimwit."  
The pigtailed man dodged two more furious slashes from the tattooed leader, and then used the girl as a springboard as she dove at him, jaw snapping for anything she could sink her teeth into.  
Once he landed he ducked another punch from the leader, and then quickly drew his combat knife and stabbed it upwards into the underside of the man's jaw.  
As the walking corpse staggered and writhed from the pain of the blow, Ranma drew his pistol just as quickly as he had his blades, pressing it firmly against the vampire's temple.  
_Blam! Blam! Blam!_

The teenage brunette trembled in horror and disbelief as her "caretaker" slowly fell to the ground, his mostly headless body crumbling to dust. The process of a vampire's destruction took only a few seconds, and when it was over even the dust had vanished, leaving only the vampire's blood: thick, dark rivulets of red that splattered on the abused concrete below.  
Before the girl could gather her wits well enough to make a decision to fight or flee, she was pulled into a run from behind, and suddenly found herself sprinting at her full-blown vampiric speed down the alleyway.  
"Don't look back. We have to concentrate on running," Garo's voice reached her ear at the same time she recognized the lithe figure tugging her along by the arm, and relief washed away the dread that had built up in her stomach. "Something's very wrong here; there's no way a single DAPC officer should be able to kill a vampire one-on-one in close combat. Those blades weren't even silver." The ponytailed man frowned deeply. While the list of midian weaknesses included mostly common commodities that one usually wouldn't use as a weapon such as silver and garlic, for weaker vampires like themselves even a mundane weapon could finish them off provided it did enough damage to completely destroy their heart or brain. The trick, of course, was in doing that much damage, given that vampires were faster, stronger, tougher, and had better senses than the humans hunting them.  
'Or at least, that's what I was led to believe,' Garo thought bitterly. He had been able to heal the cut from Ranma's blade in a little under a minute, but that was an almost negligible amount of damage, even as debilitating as it had been.  
"We have to regroup elsewhere and set up an ambush," the brunette suggested. "If we can find some others-"  
"Then we risk leading the DAPC right to them," the ponytailed nosferatu interrupted. "That was only one man; we have no way of knowing the strength of the rest of their officers."  
The teenager scowled deeply as she followed her last surviving companion. The idea of running from humans disgusted her; it reminded her too much of her old life, and the reason she had given it up for an eternity of living damnation. At the same time though, it was an activity she was getting quite used to.  
"Hold it!" Garo put on the brakes as he turned the corner, and bits of broken concrete flew from the heels of his shoes as he skidded to a stop, halting the girl's momentum as well.  
"What? What's wrong?" She asked, quickly scanning the surroundings for the pigtailed officer as she extended her senses.  
The green-haired man twitched, and she immediately heard what he had sensed before her.  
_Snap! Crunch! Shlk! Chomp!_  
"My ghouls..." Garo said, twitching as he rounded the corner.  
The teenager twitched irritably as well, but for a different reason. 'Damn it all! This isn't the time for Garo to be worrying about his zombies! Why the hell does he care about those ugly freaks, anyway?' For most vampires, ghouls were simply hideous, noisy slaves that could be created more easily than they could be destroyed, but Garo was one of the odd ones that seemed to value them as more than an annoying and occasionally useful side-effect of his feeding. She had even heard that he named and clothed the less disfigured ones and kept them as servants. She found it disgusting, and far less reasonable than the tendency of a few vampires to discriminate in their selection of victims, seeking only adult men or criminals or such people while refusing to harm children or women. Utter nonsense.

The irony of the sight that greeted the two midians when they turned the corner was not lost on either of them.  
Blood stained the walls and ground of the dumpster area, the partially dry light spray caused by Ranma's passage contrasted by the messy splotches of brighter crimson that appeared as the dead undead were torn apart and eaten.  
Yet again, the vampire girl felt terror overwhelm the arrogance instilled in her since becoming a vampire. Chomping on the reanimated and reterminated flesh was a clawed, armored beast that resembled some sort of evil, demonic velociraptor with an extra pair of claws mounted on its back.  
To make the scene even more unreal, a blue-haired woman wearing the same uniformed body-armor as the pigtailed cop was leaning casually against the wall of the alley next to a dumpster, cleaning the barrel of a combat shotgun.  
"You know, you could learn a thing or two from the alien, there." She gestured to the zergling, which tore off a ghoul's arm and swiftly gulped it down. "A good predator eats all, or at least most, of what it kills. Just drinking the blood? Very wasteful. Hardly worth giving up a human life." Asuka finished cleaning the gun and proceeded to load it, looking entirely unconcerned with the two undead at the other end of the area.  
'I don't know what's worse: that these people have been picking us off, or that they keep lecturing us as they do it,' the brunette groused. "What the hell is that thing?"  
"Oh, don't look so freaked out, you abomination," Asuka said irritably, cocking her shotgun. "At least Hunter's alive. And his victims don't get back up. Ever."  
The green-haired vampire stepped forward, showing about as much fear for the shotgun as Asuka was showing for him. "Move aside now, human. Don't attempt to stop us, and we won't make any attempt on your life. Tonight we retreat." Hunter rose up from his meal and growled dangerously at the two midians, picking up on the increasing tension.  
"Not happening, bloodsucker," the captain said firmly, finally aiming the shotgun. "You're under arrest. We've decided that it would be nice to have a vampire as a prisoner, so instead of getting wiped out, you're going to surrender and come with us."  
The ponytailed vampire snorted. "Lambs do not give orders to wolves."  
Asuka snorted back. "Naw. THOSE poor saps were lambs," she said, gesturing to Hunter's most recent meal. "I like to think of myself as more of a shepherd, really."  
"I tire of banter. DIE!"

The nosferatu darted forward, his teeth elongating reflexively as he prepared to end the conflict with a single, flesh-rending bite.  
In response, Hunter jerked to the side and attempted to intercept, snarling and slashing with his spine-mounted claws as he moved between his master and his enemy. The alien's speed surprised Garo, but it was not nearly enough to stop him, and he easily leapt over the beast, merely getting raked a bit along his calf in mid-jump.  
Blood spouted from the deep gash on his leg as he landed, but he ignored the wound easily, the cut not deep enough to completely sever the muscle, and the pain kept at bay by undeath.  
_BLAM!_ Asuka's shotgun blast was a slightly different story, and the vampire muttered a quick curse as he dodged as best he could, his arm disintegrating into a spray of flesh and blood.  
'Using the monster to slow me down and corral me into her line of fire... smart,' the midian admitted grudgingly, sprinting forward again. 'But she won't get off another shot!'  
Grabbing Asuka's shoulder and slamming back into the dumpster, Garo opened his mouth wide, his jaw stretching beyond its human limitations and revealing needle-like teeth as he lunged for the officer's neck.  
_Crunch!_ He winced as he ended up biting deeply into the shotgun instead. Apparently the woman had spent her split-second of respite preparing to fend him off rather than lining up for another shot or firing blindly, and had shoved her weapon into his jaw the moment he opened it.

The young brunetted growled as she saw the alien beast turn toward Garo, and dashed forward to jump on top of it, hoping she could find a soft point in the creature's armor to cut or bite it.  
"Careful now, or you'll lose a limb," a voice said suddenly, and the girl ducked desperately as a silver arc flashed above her, marking the path of Ranma's slash.  
She struck back with as powerful a kick she could manage in her position in such a short frame of opportunity, and then she nearly lost her balance as her foe hopped over the clumsy attack.  
"Got some fight still in ya, eh?" Ranma flipped the mono-molecular edged wakazashi around in his hand and beckoned the vampire girl forward. "Better to fight me than Hunter. It's never fun facing off against something that's going to eat you when it wins."  
"And what do you think I'm going to do to you?" The brunette snarled, rising to her feet.  
Ranma blinked. "Well... bleed on my shoes, mostly. Which really sucks. These things are brand new, you know."  
"GRRAAAUGH!" Roaring savagely, the girl attacked.  
_Shng! Slak!_

Asuka grit her teeth as her opponent increased the pressure on her arm, his fingers digging into the layer of ceramic polymer that shielded the Kevlar fibers below.  
Letting go of the Pancor Jackhammer (the vampire had bitten quite deeply into it, so it would be some time before it could be extracted), she reached down to her belt, grabbing and drawing the combat knife at her hip with a speed that spoke of much practice, followed by much more experience.  
_Gash!_ The vampire twitched as she impaled his wrist with the blade and then twisted, forcing him to loosen his grip before he could manage to crush her shoulder in his hand.  
Throwing himself back, the ponytailed midian reared a foot back, preparing to smash the foolish woman before she could come up with any more tricks.  
_Crunch!_ His eyes widened as he felt a startling pain in his kicking leg, followed by the limb's helpless refusal to move forward where the rest of his body wanted to go. He looked behind him to confirm the hold up, afraid that he already knew what was wrong.  
_Snap!_ Hunter chewed straight through the skin and bone of the vampire's knee, and then pinned the helpless man down with his front legs once he fell.  
Asuka smiled, despite the disturbing scene of Hunter keeping the vampire from escaping as he feasted on dismembered limbs. "Good boy, Hunter. Good boy."

Turning away from the disabled vampire, Asuka quickly found the other vampire, who was slightly less disabled, but no more of a threat.  
"Well, I was wrong. My shoes are still clean," Ranma said happily as the brunette twitched on the ground, her lower torso effectively neutralized by the wakazashi stuck into the small of her back and impeding the function of her spinal chord.  
"Wh-Who are you p-people?" The girl asked, horrified.  
"We're the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment," Asuka said smugly, massaging her badly bruised arm. "Consider yourself contained, vampire."  
_Hack! Pthoo!_ Garo coughed as he managed to spit out the gun that had been impaled on his teeth. "_Cough! Cough!_ There was... _Cough!_ talk of s-surrender, I believe? _Cough!_"  
"If I recall, you waived the 'surrender' option," Asuka deadpanned. "We're way past that. Now we're at 'capture', which is far more unpleasant." As if to underline her point, Hunter swallowed the ponytailed man's right leg, and then sank his beak into the left, still keeping the vampire firmly pinned.  
"You're monsters!" The teenager cried, clenching her pointed teeth.  
Ranma and Asuka looked at the girl, surprised by the outburst.  
Then they busted out laughing.  
"Bwa ha ha ha ha! Oh, that's rich!" The police captain said, slapping her knee.  
"Heh heh heh! Called a monster by a vampire? Kind of a compliment, don'cha think?" Ranma chuckled and shook his head.  
"It's true! Even we've never made a victim suffer like this!" The brunette shouted, tears emerging from her eyes as she stared hatefully at the two humans.  
Asuka's laughing softened to chuckles. "That's the difference, freak. You kill victims. We punish monsters. And coincidentally, torture and slow, painful deaths are both perfectly acceptable methods of punishment for inhuman abominations like yourselves."  
"She's right," Ranma said, nodding. "It's in our charter and everything."  
"You won't get away with this!" The girl seethed. "There are more of us! More powerful ones! We'll kill you! All of you!"  
"Yeah, okay, fine. Anyway, we have to speed this along. It's late and my shoulder hurts like hell." Immediately the paralyzed teenager began shouting profanities at her, and then Asuka raised an eyebrow as she thought of something. "You know, I just remembered; we only need one prisoner."  
The brunette fell silent.  
Asuka nodded at the unspoken question. Then she snapped her fingers. "Hunter. Kill her."  
"Shraaugh!" the zergling pulled itself away from where he had been gnawing on Garo's remaining arm, and then dashed toward the younger midian, his beak snapping fiercely.  
"N-No! NO! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"  
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Ranma yawned as he stripped off his shirt, glancing at it briefly to check for bloodstains.  
Satisfied that his jacket and body armor had absorbed the most of the gore from the night's encounter, he tossed the garment into the large pile he kept in the corner of his room until laundry day (which arrived whenever the pile grew big enough to overflow into the closet).  
On the opposite side of Ranma's bedroom, Hunter slowly lumbered into his favorite sleeping spot, feeling drowsy. The zergling had been assigned to remove, meaning devour, the dozen ghouls in the apartment where the DAPC had initially found the teenage vampires, as well as the other ghouls from later that night, and a vampire and a half. And even though the girl had turned mostly to dust in his stomach once she had finally expired, the killer alien was still pleasantly full for once.  
"G'night Hunter. Good work tonight," the pigtailed cop mumbled, climbing into bed.  
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"Ranma Saotome."  
The pigtailed man blinked in surprise and whirled around, dropping into a defensive stance. "Huh? What the-? How'd you sneak up on me?"  
The tall blonde woman with wings shook her head as Ranma started to look around at his surroundings. "I didn't sneak up on you. You just got here."  
"Oh. That explains it," Ranma mumbled, wondering why the hall he was standing in was made of crystal. "I guess. Where is here, again?"  
Serenity smirked slightly. "This is a dream world, Saotome-san. A mere fabrication of thought meant to distract your subconscious as you rest. It is here that I can speak to you openly."  
Ranma frowned at the woman, rubbing his chin. "Hey, you look kinda familiar."  
The smile became strained. "Yes. My name is Queen Serenity. The last time we met, you swatted me and dropped me off a cliff."  
"Ah ha! That's right!" Ranma nodded happily, then took a moment to look her up and down. "Wow. You've really put on the pounds since then."  
A vein popped up on the winged woman's head. "Can we be serious for a moment here?"  
"And why should I?" The pigtailed man said irritably, crossing his arms over his chest. "I've been fighting evil dead people all evening. I'm sick of serious. I want to team up the Konoha village Ninja and have wacky adventures rife with crazy Ninja tricks and underage innuendo!"  
The ancient monarch sweatdropped. "Well, too bad. I have a very important mission for you."  
"I don't take missions from fairy people botherin' me at home," Ranma said firmly, turning his head away pointedly. "If you wanna give me an assignment, submit a case to Captain Takami, and I'll take care of it at work."  
"No, that's not what I mean," Serenity tried to explain.  
"Nope! Missions go through Asuka! That's the rule!" Ranma said, turning away with his arms still crossed.  
The blonde woman shook her head, flinging her long ponytails around wildly. "No, you don't understand! I can't 'submit' anything to anybody!"  
"Well, why not?" Ranma said skeptically, turning his head back toward her. "It's a good enough system for everyone else."  
"I'm not actually alive. That makes it rather difficult to speak to people as you would," the woman deadpanned, her expression grave.  
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Not alive. Meaning you're dead?"  
Serenity nodded. "Dead for millennia and not getting any better, either. Now can we focus on the mission?"  
When she looked back up at the pigtailed man, her face darkened. Ranma was holding a gigantic fly swatter above his head, ready to bring it down upon the apparition before him.  
"I don't do missions for dead people. I do missions destroying them." Then he brought down his weapon.  
Serenity flinched, preparing to take the hit in stride.  
It wasn't until it was far too late that she realized that the weapon Ranma was wielding was not a giant plastic fly swatter, but in fact a giant steel baker's peel.  
Her last thought before her dream body was obliterated was to wonder where on Earth the martial artist would ever get the idea for such a bizarre, and in this case, ironic weapon.  
_CRUNCH!_  
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Yamiko stumbled drowsily through the halls of Wraith's secondary labs, massaging her head.  
"Damn it... bastards kept me up so late..." the snow-haired scientist had been interrogated long into the night, and had gotten a mere four hours of sleep before she was due back in the lab for her new assignment. This, added to the previous night of sleepless labor, had left the evil doctor in very poor mental and physical shape as she felt the full weight of her fatigue.  
"Worse' of 'em is Konta. Damn ashhole," she mumbled sleepily, her eyelids drooping. "Swear, when I get my han's on 'im, I'm gonna-"  
"Going to what?" Yoshi asked, coming up behind the taller woman with a coffee cup in hand.  
"GWAUGH!" Yamiko jumped forward and stumbled, falling flat on her face. _Thud!_  
Yoshi blinked. "Good morning, Dr. Nova. Looking a bit tired, aren't you? Coffee?"  
"Wh-Where..." she looked up at the little man, and then a vein popped on her head as adrenaline washed away some of her fatigue. "Of course I'm tired, you moron! And it's all your fault!"  
"Irrational finger-pointing does not become you, Doctor," Yoshi said seriously.  
"'Irrational'? You ducked out and left me to take the heat from the generals! You used me to save your own skin!" Yamiko accused, standing back up and balling her hands into fists.  
Yoshi simply nodded. "And you would've done the exact same thing in my position."  
"..." Yamiko's mouth remained open in mid-rant, but nothing came out. "... Wait, hold on..." she murmured. She KNEW there was something wrong with that logic, but with so little sleep, it escaped her mind's grasp.  
"No time for that now. Come on, follow me. We have some follow-up work to do on our little blonde borg." Yoshi beckoned toward the taller woman as he turned away down an alternate hall.  
"I can't help you with that, Professor," Yamiko said irritably, fighting a yawn. "I've been assigned to deal with an alternate genetic strain that contaminated some samples in Project Mobius."  
"You're not going to be doing that," Yoshi said simply, pushing through a set of double-doors.  
Yamiko frowned. "Do you have the authority to override General Tokima's orders?"  
"That's irrelevant, because her orders no longer apply," Yoshi explained as he walked up to a device on the wall and began pushing buttons and turning dials. "I was here early and I got bored, so I disposed of the contamination before my shift started. You're welcome."  
The white-haired woman flinched badly as her inner emotions began an all-out war trying to decide what she thought of that. "So, wait, what did you want me to do?"  
"Come here Yamiko. See this?" Yoshi activated a digital screen, which showed an outline of a female figure with long ponytails. "This scanner detects the quantum vectors being activated through the hammerspace capacitor as well as the precise unit module being used. With this and the visual uplinks, we'll be able to study the subject thoroughly without wasting time and resources installing third-party surveillance."  
"Wait..." Yamiko scrubbed her hair with her hand, frowning. "If you know where she is... then why don't we go get her?"  
"Oh, yes, that's a grand idea," Yoshi deadpanned. "You can take point, and I'll cover you. And what'll we be using for weapons? Scientists don't have easy access to the armory, you know. Afraid we'll decide to destroy our horrific research in a melodramatic act of suicidal redemption."  
"Don't we have an army or something for these types of things?" The woman scientist said groggily, still feeling her fatigue eating away at her cognitive facilities.  
"Yes. An army that can't learn too much about our cybernetic blonde, or they'll kill us both for letting her get away. So it's observation for now." Yoshi smirked, and Yamiko nodded even though she was obviously irritated.  
The white-haired woman watched the screen for several moments, and then her eyes narrowed. "Strange... something seems to be wrong. Is she malfunctioning?"  
"No, she's working perfectly," Yoshi assured her, adjusting some meters off in a corner.  
"Well, then something must be wrong with the scanner," Yamiko asserted.  
"I assure you, the equipment is fine. There's no malfunctions anywhere."  
Yamiko frowned and scratched her head. "But... according to this, she just keeps activating the same device, over and over, and has been for the last... twenty minutes!"  
Yoshi nodded. "Yes. That was when she found the Pez dispenser."  
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_Click! Crunch!  
Click! Crunch!  
Click! Snap! Crunch!  
Click! Crunch!_  
Rei's eyebrow twitched irritably as she tried her best to participate in the Senshi meeting, and organize the joint effort to come up with a solution to investigating Usagi's kidnappers.  
The meeting was rather off-track, however, because said girl was completely engrossed in eating tiny hard candies that she could dispense from her wrist. And Rei was certain that she wasn't the only one disturbed by the sight of their princess sitting in the corner, forearm over her head, while flicking her wrist Spider-Man-style and devouring the tiny sugar tablets that had come out of her in the first place.  
_Click! Crunch!  
Click! Crunch!_  
"So... uh... terrorists..." Minako said, clearly not focused on the matter at hand. "What was it we decided on about that?"  
"NOTHING," Rei snapped. "That's what we're here to do. This is a brainstorming session."  
_Click! Crunch!  
Click! Crunch!  
Click! Gulp! Kack! Cough!_  
Usagi coughed twice more, and then blinked rapidly as her throat cleared. "Whoa... I missed that one."  
"I'd guessed," Rei deadpanned, fighting the urge to restrict her princess' breathing more permanently. "Can we get back to the issue at hand?"  
"That depends. Am I out of Pez?" Usagi asked rhetorically.  
No. Came the text response in blocky green lettering.  
"Sweet!" Usagi raised her arm again, only to have it yanked back down by the temperamental fire Senshi.  
"That's enough! We need to concentrate here!" Rei growled.  
"You're just jealous because candy doesn't come out of your arm!" The blonde girl accused, causing the remaining three Senshi and two moon cats still seated to fall over into a heap.  
Rei gaped, quite unsure how to respond to that. "Can you just focus? This is serious business, here!"  
"YOU take care of the serious business!" Usagi said vehemently, snatching her arm away. "I'm the one who has to get used to being half robot!"  
"Eighty percent robot," Ami corrected. The others ignored her.  
"If we can fix you, then you won't HAVE to get used to it!" the fire Senshi shouted back.  
Usagi frowned, apparently considering this. "Oh. Okay. But if we get that far, do you think they'd be able to leave the Pez thing in?"  
"No," Rei said immediately, not knowing or caring if that was actually possible.  
"This is all so unbelievable," Artemis murmured, having been brought up to speed just that morning. "Do any of the others know?"  
"No. Mamoru and the outer Senshi don't know about this. And frankly, I think we should contact them as soon as possible," Ami said.  
Usagi froze, and tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes. "Mamo-chan... _Sniff!_ What's HE going to think when he finds out... finds out I'm... _Sniffle!_"  
"Oh, get over it!" Rei growled. "What did I tell you? We might be able to fix it!"  
"Even if it is possible to find those responsible immediately, we should still contact the others," Ami insisted. "Mamoru's... less direct and less lethal style of combat could be quite effective if we end up fighting a gun battle, and the Outer Senshi... uh..." she shrugged. "Well, the Outer Senshi would be effective in that they would probably tear into any opponents there without any of the hesitation we're worried about."  
"Have we figured out any way to find those responsible?" Luna asked.  
"I still think we should start with the Freedom's Angels," Rei said firmly. "No matter how unlikely that a mundane terrorist organization is behind this, they're the only ones that manufacture those battle robots we found guarding Usagi. We might be able to find out where they sold their weapons, and track them that way."  
Ami nodded. "That's a good idea... but there's the still the problem of going about that. Even with the help of Mamoru and the Outers, I don't feel comfortable barging into the first stronghold we find trying to capture information."  
Usagi raised her hand, momentarily forgetting about the awkward news to give her boyfriend. "Ooh! I know! I know! We can use the Luna Disguise Pen!"  
"Get real, meatball head," Rei snapped, "we're not trying to 'blend in' at some exclusive social event. We're trying to infiltrate a paramilitary base! It's going to take more than a disguise."  
Ami looked up at the others pensively, seeing that once again, her friends were waiting for tactical brilliance to come from her, as usual. "Uhm... well... I DO have an idea... but you're not gonna like it."  
"As long as it doesn't involve joining the terrorists first," Minako said sourly.  
Ami reasoned that this new idea WAS slightly more repulsive than her own, and took it as a green light to speak her mind. "The DAPC has extensive experience in-"  
"NO!" Minako, Makoto, and Rei all shouted, startling both moon cats.  
"Oh, come on!" Ami protested. "They saved our butts last time!"  
"And then they burnt our butts blowing up the facility!" Makoto pointed out. "Plus, that explosion could have killed Usagi-chan!"  
"And it WOULD have," Ami pointed out, "had not one of their officers carried her out on his back. So... you know, I think those two events cancel each other out. Almost."  
"They're really not THAT bad," Usagi said in defense of Ami's plan, "and since Ami-chan's cousin is Captain, it's like having an inside guy right at the top!"

Artemis turned toward his black, feline equivalent as the Senshi began to argue heatedly. "So, what is all this about a... DPC?"  
"DAPC. Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment," Luna explained, having been given a full run-down of the arrest and proceeding events already. "And for what it is... it's a long story, is what it is. The short of it is that they're demon-hunting cops who don't get along so well with other demon-hunting groups that aren't government-sponsored."  
"Demon-hunting cops?" the white cat said skeptically. "That's stupid."  
"That's what I thought at first, too. But they have a tank."  
"Ooh... I see." Artemis raised an eyebrow as he thought about that.

"No! Anybody who'd put us in cuffs for blasting a youma and then keep us in those dingy little animal cells is no friend of mine!" Rei said bitterly. "No way, no how! I am NOT going to them for help!"  
"You know, those were the GOOD cells," Ami rationalized, hands on her hips. "The DAPC generally doesn't keep human prisoners. All they have is the light containment lab, and the heavy containment facilities underground. We're lucky we got into the lab."  
"'Lucky'? THEY'RE lucky we didn't get pissed off and blast our way outta there!"  
"Are you serious? They're police officers!"  
"They're violent, corrupt maniacs who wear a badge! Pluto BRIBED them to get us out of there, remember?"  
"Everybody, PLEASE!" Usagi shouted suddenly, causing the other Senshi to stop arguing with Ami in their surprise. "We're not getting anywhere like this! Please, stop fighting!" A tear slowly formed at the corner of her eye, causing all those assembled to wince deeply. "I know you guys are still mad about what they did to us, but they're still the good guys, and one of them is Ami's relative!"  
Ami nodded quickly. "Whatever you can say about the arrest, they were just doing their jobs. We enjoy autonomy in everything we do; they can't discriminate between 'enemy' and 'friendly' magic-users so easily."  
Rei began to grind her teeth, being far too stubborn to abandon her position, but finding that same position crumbling under Ami's logic. "There HAS to be another way."  
"Well, do you have any better ideas?" Usagi asked, planting her fists on her hips. "I mean, if the disguise pen won't do it, what do we have left? Ninja skills? Phantom powers? Cloaking devices?"  
_Pshoooooo..._  
Everyone in the room blinked as glowing, green crystal faces surfaced on Usagi's arms, face, and legs, each one framed in a thin metal outlet that was bonded with her skin.  
_Bwom_ Usagi vanished in a wave of ambient light just as she started to panic, and the other Senshi and moon cats watched in silence as a cry of surprise came from the empty spot above the indentation in the carpet that marked where Usagi was sitting.  
"Gah! N-No way! I'm disappearing! Somebody help! What's happening?" The blonde cyborg looked around her, expecting her friends and advisors to be panicking and looking for her.  
Instead, the moon cats seemed to be entirely engrossed in a discussion about giant robots, and for some reason Rei, Makoto, and Minako were all staring at her, despite her being invisible, with unsettling smiles on their faces.  
Rei took all this in far more calmly than their princess, and slowly nodded her head as she steepled her fingers in front of her. "Ladies, felines... I believe we've found our alternative solution."  
Usagi was about to ask what Rei was referring to, when her brain finally caught up with her panic centers and informed them of the obvious. Comprehension was just a step behind. "Oh!$me..."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The very next day saw Usagi pacing the room tensely, mumbling to herself worriedly.  
The reason for this was not, as one might expect, the upcoming mission that Rei and Ami were planning that would have her pitting her questionable courage, wit, and skill with her new body against an organized, hostile paramilitary force. No, for Usagi such serious and dreadful matters were easily forgotten and put aside to worry about later.  
What had her in such a fit was that Ami had called Mamoru and left a message that briefly explained what had happened to Usagi, and that they needed to call in Tuxedo Kamen to help deal with the situation. They had received no call back, so they had no idea what had happened once he had heard the news, or even if he had heard the news at all. To Usagi, this meant that Mamoru could burst through the door at any moment to pass judgment upon her, and frankly, it was driving Ami insane.  
"Ami-chan, I don't think you should have worded the message like that," Usagi said finally, turning toward the blue haired girl who had been doing her best to ignore her.  
"Uh huh," Ami responded, concentrating on the TV screen as she navigated a dark tunnel via the Gamecube controller in her hand.  
"No, I'm serious!" Usagi said irritably. "I mean, don't you think it's kind of weird to drop 'Usagi's been turned into a cyborg' on him all at once like that?"  
"Uh huh," Ami responded, lightly tapping the control stick as she snuck up behind a guard.  
"AMI! You're not even listening!" Usagi shouted, causing her brilliant young friend to jump slightly. That same action was mirrored by her character a moment later as she pushed the wrong button, and Ami clenched her teeth as the guard turned around and blasted her with an automatic rifle.  
Hitting the button to restart the level, Ami glared at Usagi. "Look, we've already been through this; the message will do the job. It will let him know what to expect, and it will get him down here to help. What more do you want? It's not like you were willing to call him yourself!"  
Frowning, the blonde crossed her arms over her chest. "I just think that you could have phrased it better. Maybe... you know, softened the blow. Like, you could have said, 'Usagi has changed a bit,' or 'something's different about Usagi.'"  
"Uh huh, right. And then he comes down here expecting to see that you bought new shoes or finally changed your hairstyle, and instead he learns that you make Star Trek's Borg look like primitive vikings. That's not the way to break this to him," Ami asserted, loading her saved game. "At worst, he'll hope this is a joke or a mistake. Otherwise, we can expect that he'll be hoping it's something small and relatively insignificant, like a robot eye or a hand or something. Though that wouldn't make sense, given our Senshi healing powers. The point is, he probably won't get hit with anything he wasn't prepared for."  
Usagi kept frowning. "Okay, fine... but... aren't you supposed to be working on that plan or something?"  
Ami nodded. "I am."  
"... No, you're playing Gamecube," the blonde deadpanned.  
"I'm playing Splinter Cell," Ami corrected. "It's a spy game. Infiltration and stealth and stuff. Very useful in researching spying techniques."  
"You're just making up excuses to play games!" Usagi accused.  
"Hey, who's the genius here?" Ami asked, not taking much attention away as she navigated the same corridor again. "We just have different ways of preparing for a complicated, dangerous task. I do research by playing games, and you find some petty private concern to distract you so that you can ignore the problem."  
The ponytailed girl stared at her shorter friend for a long time before she spoke again. "You know, you've been having a real attitude problem recently."  
Ami blinked, though she didn't take attention away from the screen. "You think so? ... Yeah... maybe you're right. Could you grab me a beer? I think that would help."  
"It's not even noon yet!" Usagi protested.  
"That's okay; I'll drink slowly."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elsewhere, at DAPC headquarters, a very different conversation was taking place between two of the esteemed (and infamous) members of that department...

"Aren't you supposed to be on patrol or something?" Junko asked as she leaned over Snake's shoulder.  
The weapons expert, predictably, didn't dare take attention away from his current round of Super Smash Brothers Melee in order to sneak a glance at Junko's brazenly displayed cleavage. "Yeah, probably. Can you get me a beer?"

For one thing, Snake was playing an entirely different game.

Junko frowned. "It's not even noon yet."  
Snake considered this as he launched Kirby toward the nearest bob-omb, managing to pick it up before the devastating explosive started moving on its own. "Okay, you're right. Let me rephrase that. Chikiko, go get me a beer."  
The redhead rolled her eyes and stood back up. "Yes Lieutenant," she mumbled sarcastically, leaving the room to go to the fridge.  
"Huh. What's her problem?" Snake asked, noting that the normally jubilant department bicycle seemed somewhat bitter.  
Kyle shrugged as he maneuvered Ness to avoid Kirby's bomb. "I think it's been a whole week since she's gotten any. That's sort of a bad streak for her."  
"Really? What's the problem?" Snake asked, not really interested in Junko's sexual affairs but hoping to distract Kyle long enough to earn some precious points.  
"It's the nighttime patrols Captain keeps putting us on. It seems to really be screwing up her clubbing schedule, and she was probably hoping you'd give her some attention."  
"Feh," Snake scoffed, using the control pad to make Kirby dash away toward a beam saber. "Why doesn't she bug you?"  
"Well... I've already slept with her," Kyle admitted somewhat bashfully, "and she's usually not interested in guys she's already been with."  
"If she's desperate, she shouldn't be so picky," Kirby attacked viciously with the beam saber, but suffered a direct hit from a well-timed fire bolt. "Or at least she should go bug Ranma instead of me. Or what about that Rayden guy?"  
"I think he got away," Kyle said as Ness advanced methodically, deflecting Kirby's every attempted assault.  
"That's a shame. He might've kept her off our backs for a little while longer. Oh, hey Chikiko," Snake said casually as the aforementioned woman stood behind the couch they were loafing on, trembling slightly as she held a can of Coors in her left hand. Kyle gulped.  
"Is it hard work hurting people as badly as you do, or does it come naturally to you?" Junko asked seriously, her face darkening.  
"It's pretty much my life. It's what I was taught while I was growing up, and it's what I do for a living. To be honest, hurting people is just who I am." Once again, Snake took no attention away from the screen. "So can I have my beer now? I think your glowing red aura thingy is warming it up. I don't like warm beer."  
_Whock!_ The DA's weapon expert winced as his subordinate slammed the can right on top of his head, and then he winced again as he lost the last precious bits of concentration it took to keep up with his opponent.  
_"PK thunder!"_ Ness shouted, his lightning bolt arcing around to touch him in the back instead of seeking out his opponent.  
_Bwoom!_ Snake grit his teeth as Kirby went sailing off the screen, marking the end of that game and the ninth such loss since that morning.

"Woohoo! I won again!" Kyle cheered as Junko stomped out of the room. "New game?"  
Snake dropped the controller with a disgusted grunt. "No thanks. Don't we have any jobs that involve blowing people up for real? I'm better at that."  
"Not really, no," Kyle scratched his head. "We've really been concentrating on the whole vampire deal. The captain, Seras, and the new guy have been down in the heavy containment center all day interrogating that one that Hunter caught."  
"New guy?"  
"Some skinny dark-skinned dude. I think his name was Yamama or something."  
"Oh," Snake frowned deeply, wishing he could have followed Ranma on the hunt rather than finishing off the ghouls in the vampires' apartments. While destroying zombies was always fun and worthwhile, it had the same satisfaction as swatting flies; one feels good doing it, but once it's finished one can't help looking at the mess and wondering where all the time went.  
Getting up from the couch, Snake turned away as he finally removed the beer can from his head.  
And then he froze as he noticed Asuka standing behind his seat, arms crossed over her chest.  
"This is rarely a good sign," Snake mumbled, looking down at his superior.  
"Indeed," the police captain said blithely, snatching away the slightly damaged beverage before Snake could open it. "I just got a fairly petty assignment. I was about to contact Saotome and give it to him, but since you've decided to skip your patrol, you have plenty of time to do it yourself."  
Snake frowned at the loss of his beer, but shrugged it off. "Okay. Doesn't sound too bad."  
"It's unlikely you'll have to shoot anyone during this assignment," Asuka said up-front.  
"Awwww... can't you give it to Kyle?" The weapons expert pleaded.  
"No. Now shut up." The blue-haired woman handed him a sheet of paper. "A couple days ago a surgeon was contacted and paid to do some extraction work on small objects lodged in a man's legs. The objects were bullets, and the man, one Mamoru Chiba, refused to say how or when he was shot. No police report was filed in regards to this incident until now, but the surgeon was very concerned. Not only did he have a bullet in each leg, but the wound had completely healed over the projectile without even a scar. Without some sort of accelerated regenerative ability, these wounds would have taken months to heal so completely, which is a time frame that should have been impossible with the bullets still in his legs."  
Snake nodded. "So you want me to find Chiba and execute him with extreme prejudice, right?"  
Asuka narrowed her eyes at him, unamused.  
"Please?"  
"You're to track down Chiba and interrogate him," Asuka said firmly. "WITHOUT anybody getting shot, if at all possible. I've already run the background check, and this guy's pretty clean. Well, except for being suspected of statutory rape. A lot. No arrests were made, though." She shrugged. "His address is on there. Come back immediately with any information you find out."  
Snake nodded, despite being ultimately dissatisfied with the job. Pocketing the notes, he wordlessly jogged out the door into the parking lot.

Asuka turned to Kyle after Snake left, and shook her head tiredly. "Hey, do you know what's wrong with Chikiko? She's seems really down," she asked Kyle as the blonde man started the one-player mode.  
"It's a long story," Kyle answered. "Well... okay, actually it's not, but I really don't think you'd be able to appreciate what's wrong."  
"Hmph. Fine." The bluette frowned. "Hey, don't YOU have a job to do too?"  
"No. Junko's supposed to be a secondary monitor for the vampire, Tiro snuck out already, and you said I'm not allowed to go out without supervision," Kyle said seriously, mowing down a line of goombas.  
Asuka sweatdropped. "Oh. Right." She had said that mostly just to mock him, but upon reflection, it was probably a smart policy.  
"Hey Captain," Kyle said, pausing his game and finally turning toward the woman. "I just had a thought."  
"What a momentous occasion," Asuka deadpanned. "By all means, allow me to share this rare and exciting nugget of wisdom you're going to insist on telling me anyway."  
Completely missing the sarcasm in her voice, Kyle nodded happily. "It's just that, when you gave Snake his mission... I know you don't like to restrict our actions too much since we need to keep our options open as much as possible, but... you probably shouldn't have said 'if at all possible' after you told him not to shoot anybody."  
Asuka's expression became unreadable as she digested this commentary. "Dear God, you're right," she said, hanging her head as she massaged her temple.  
"Oh! Hey! I just had another thought!"  
The police captain winced. "Two in an hour? You're going to hurt yourself."  
"I was just thinking," Kyle mumbled, leaning back in the couch and crossing his arms over his chest. "It's been more pleasant around here than usual. And safer too. In the parking lot and local streets, that is."  
"As amazing as it is, again you're right. Suddenly I feel like buying a lottery ticket isn't such a long-shot," Asuka said, rubbing her chin. "What is it, though? It's not like we suddenly have something that we were missing. More like something that was dragging us down is gone."  
"Yeah..." Kyle mumbled. "I was thinking about that for a while. I thought I had figured it out, but then I started thinking about marshmallows instead." He turned back toward Asuka. "Why is it that when you roast a marshmallow, the outside turns crispy but the inside turns gooey?"  
"Shut up and play your game," Asuka said, turning away toward her office. 'Moron. His other point was spot on, though. It has been nicer around here recently. I wonder what it is that's different?'  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Yeah, I think I can forget about the flight entirely," Sakura said, sighing.  
Tycho twitched as he looked out across the vast sand dunes of the Sahara desert, and let his head slump forward and hit the wheel. "What. The. Hell. We didn't even cross a body of water. We didn't fly anywhere. There are no deserts this large in Japan. HOW?"  
Ryoga shook his head as he scanned the map, an embarrassed flush on his face. "I really don't know where we went wrong... but I think we're here, in Antarctica."  
Sakura sweatdropped. "Uhm... you have the map upside down, see? North should be pointing upward."  
"Confusing north and south doesn't even begin to describe the scope of what's wrong with that miserable attempt at navigation," Tycho seethed.  
"You're not helping the situation," Sakura chided, not in the best of moods herself after spending multiple days driving without access to a shower or proper sleeping arrangements.  
"The situation can't be helped!" The driver shouted. "We've somehow lost ourselves in a desert, we're completely out of gas, we only have as much food and water as THIS idiot," he pointed to Ryoga, who sweatdropped, "brought with him before he directed us into the middle of nowhere, you're trying to find our location and directions out of here on a **world atlas** for some reason, and to top it all off, I'm totally late for work!" He pounded the steering wheel in aggravation. "What am I gonna do? How is everybody holding up without me there? Are they okay? Hell, if they're even still alive, they're probably too worried to work!"  
Sakura frowned. "... Somehow, I have a feeling they're doing all right."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hi guys! I'm back!" Minako said as she entered her dorm room, only to be greeted with absolute silence.  
A cursory glance around the room explained why. Ami was still playing Gamecube, and from the way she tottered from side to side slightly, the half-dozen empty cans left on the coffee table belonged to her. Usagi was in no better shape, her state of emotional distress having evolved from the pacing stage to the "hugging your knees on the floor while mumbling to yourself" stage.  
"Good God, look at you two," Luna said, trotting in under Minako's legs. "I haven't seen anything this ugly since the last time the world almost ended."  
Usagi twitched. "I wonder if I have a taser option installed..." she said aloud, her eyes narrowing.  
_Chnk!_ Her wrist bent forward, and twin metal rods extended from the blonde girl's arm. Luna immediately dashed behind Minako's legs.  
"Please, don't start," the other blonde mumbled, walking into the room and sitting down on her bed (Luna followed her movements carefully to stay behind her the whole time). "Have we made any progress at all?"  
"I called Mamoru a couple o' hours ago," Ami said off-handedly, still paying shaky attention to her video game. "Gave him the basics. Haven't heard back from 'im. The outers still don't know."  
Minako frowned. "Really? Not even Setsuna?"  
Ami snorted. "Who knows? It'd be nice for her to show up about now, though. You know, just to figure out if this was a bit of a detour as far as destiny is concerned, or if Neo Queen Serenity was **supposed** to have bio-plasmic breast implants."  
Minako expected some sort of return commentary from Usagi, but when she turned back toward her princess, the ponytailed blonde was still staring at the taser on her wrist.  
"Wow... I wonder what other kind of stuff I have?" Usagi said aloud to herself. "Candy, cloaking devices, remote controls, shockers..."  
"Flamethrowers, laser emitters, USB ports, rocket boosters," Ami rattled off as she continued playing. "And that's just the stuff I could actual identify. Whatever you think of being a cyborg, Usagi-chan, whoever did this to you put some serious effort into making you the best cyborg you could be. We're talking the full package, here."  
Usagi thought about that for a moment, then flushed slightly as her expression turned serious. "Hey... Ami-chan?"  
"Eh?" The somewhat sloshed gamer paused the Gamecube and focused her attention on Usagi, recognizing that this might be important. Luna and Minako also remained quiet and paid careful attention, curious as to what was wrong.  
"So... I know I feel the same and have my sense of touch and everything... but, uh... can I..." her flush darkened, and she gulped. "Can I still... you know... do 'it'?"  
Ami remained clueless. "Do 'it'? Do what? What's 'it'?"  
"You know what I'm talking about!" Usagi accused. Despite Minako and Makoto's sexual promiscuity, she was still a virgin, and still felt embarrassed to talk about it openly, especially when she knew it really shouldn't have been her biggest concern at the time.  
"No, I don't know," Ami said, annoyed. "What are you talking about?"  
"The horizontal tango?" Minako guessed, causing both of the other girls to look at her in the surprise. "That's it, right? You're talking about doing the deed. Bumping uglies. Swapping tartar sauce. Threading the-"  
"THANK YOU, Mina-chan, I've got it now," Ami interrupted.  
"Of course. THOSE expressions you know by heart," Luna muttered to the Senshi of love, shaking her head.  
"Anyway, it's a perfectly valid concern; you shouldn't be embarrassed," Ami explained gently to the cybernetic blonde. "Although the skin is no longer natural, the form remains the same, as well as the nerve structure."  
"Huh?" Said the blondes in tandem.  
Ami sighed. "You still have a vagina, Usagi-chan." The blondes nodded, and Usagi looked relieved.  
'Guess I'd better be straightforward about this,' Ami thought, though she was a little embarrassed to speak frankly of such things herself. In the realm of serious intimacy, she was less experienced than Usagi, in that she had never had a serious long-term relationship.  
"Like I mentioned before, your reproductive system has been largely untouched and properly insulated from your more dangerous equipment, so you can still get pregnant and give birth, and everything works the same... well, except your breasts."  
"Huh? What's wrong with my breasts?" Usagi asked, reaching up and squeezing her chest experimentally.  
"Well, Makoto mentioned they were bigger. They're bigger because they replaced the mammary glands with soft-cell plasma reactors. Oh, which reminds me; you still need to eat to power your body." When she stopped talking, Ami realized that everyone else in the room was staring at her wide-eyed. "But maybe you'd like to put aside the topic of food for now."  
"P-Plasma? Reactors?" Usagi stared down her cleavage in horror. "Are they safe?"  
"What?" Ami asked, confused. "Why wouldn't they be?"  
"You said plasma! You know, like 'plasma' plasma!" Usagi said, waving her arms frantically as she stared at Ami. "And in a reactor!"  
Ami stared back, totally unable to comprehend the problem. "Yeeeeeah... and?"  
"Well it... hell, **I** don't know what plasma is, but aren't you always using it to kill people in those shooter games you always play? And in a reactor!"  
"What she's trying to ask is," Minako explained, herself edging away from the other blonde, "are her boobs gonna explode?"  
A huge sweatdrop rolled down the back of Ami's head. "Oh-kaaaay... first of all, plasma is..." she was already half-way done composing her lecture on experimental energy states in her head when she remembered who her audience was. "You know what? Let's forget about what plasma is and move on to the second of all: Only unstable reactors carry the risk of an explosion if damaged, and even then, the safeguards to prevent anything of the sort are extensive. Your generators are very stable, and if I may say so, would look very nice in that two-piece you wanted to get last week." She smirked as Usagi sighed in relief. "Your breasts are in no danger. Though obviously, you're going to be giving Chibi-Usa formula in the future."  
"That's a relief. I guess this whole 'cyborg' thing isn't all that bad," Usagi mused. "I mean... I can get used to it, at least."  
"I'm sure you will," Ami said, smiling. "Oh! When you do have intercourse though, make sure your partner is on top."  
Usagi blinked, and Minako shook her head.  
"Aw, that's no fun!" Minako interjected. "Why does she have to do that?"  
"Because she's put on about a hundred and fifty kilograms. She could crush Mamoru like a bug." Ami frowned immediately. "Okay... there's definitely a more sensitive way I could have put that."  
Alas, it was far too late. The floodgates opened, and the unstoppable torrent poured forth.  
"WAAAAAAAH! I knew it was all too good to be true! THEY MADE ME **FAT**! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Usagi bawled, twin arcs of water shooting from her eyes in opposite directions.

"I guess it was too much to ask that they take out the tear ducts," Luna muttered, a vein popping up on her head.  
Minako nodded somewhat numbly. "Yeah... though the water pressure seems to be about the same."  
"Usagi-chan! Calm down!" Ami shouted in a panic. "You're not fat! Just, please, stop!"  
_Sniffle!_ "B-But you just... you j-just said that I weighed a hundred-fifty kilograms!" _Sniff!_ The blonde princess said, the flood slowing to a mere double waterfall pouring down Usagi's cheeks.  
"Actually, she said you put ON about a hundred-fifty kg," Luna pointed out. "Meaning you actually weigh more than that."  
Luna's thoughtful and flawlessly accurate correction was welcomed with a swift kick from Minako that sent the aggravating feline rolling under Minako's bed.  
"What Luna **meant** to say," Minako growled, pulling the covers on her bed down to trap Luna underneath, "is that Ami-chan can explain why you weigh more than before even though you're not fat at all and look great!"  
"Urm... uh, right!" Ami sweatdropped. "I mean, it's not very complicated; you have a lot of gear packed away in you, and the capacitor that allows different devices to fit in the same space only nullifies certain physical laws related to volume. Your mass is entirely at the mercy of gravity."  
Usagi didn't really understand that explanation, but found Ami's long-winded support more comforting than Minako's nervous reassurance. "So... maybe I should start working out?" She asked timidly, still sniffling slightly.  
Another sweatdrop rolled down Ami's head. "Uh... no. You don't have muscle to build, or fat to lose anymore. Exercise can only consume energy, in your case."  
"THEN THERE'S NO HOPE!" The ponytailed blonde sobbed, returning to her previous state of uninhibited bawling.  
Ami shook her head as she turned back to her game. "I tried. You SAW me. I give up."  
Minako just sighed and finally let Luna out from under her bed. "I guess she really hasn't changed, huh?"  
"Is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?" Luna asked irritably.

A moment later, Minako, Luna and Usagi all turned toward the door as it suddenly burst open.  
_Slam!_ "You guys! Mamoru's here! He's-" Makoto started to dash forward, but stopped and spun around as Rei's shouting came from the further down the dorm hall.  
"Hey! Wait a minute! You can't just barge in there like this! Slow down!"  
Even Ami paused her game to turn around this time, and Usagi froze like a deer in the headlights as her tears slowed to nothing. "Wha... bu... I... I'm n-not ready!" She said, horrified.  
"Hey! Don't ignore me!" Came Rei's voice, much closer this time. "Come back here!"  
The ponytailed cyborg's breathing increased substantially, and it seemed to Minako that she was trying to hyperventilate again. "What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do?"  
"Just calm down!" Makoto said desperately. "Do that 'speak from the heart' thing!"  
"She doesn't actually have a heart anymore," Ami commented in a statement she would later blame on the alcohol, "it's actually an entire oxygen-"  
"Your technical expertise is **SO** unappreciated right now!" Makoto snapped, leaning down and taking Usagi's hand for comfort.  
_Slam!_

Everybody looked pensively at Mamoru, who stood in the doorway breathing heavily.  
"Oh... uh... Mamoru! Hi! We've sorta been expecting you!" Minako said immediately, trying to buy Usagi some time to compose herself. "So! How's work been?"  
He ignored her, which was the very least of what everybody expected him to do.  
"Usagi..." He mumbled, looking her over carefully. Everyone in the room winced as they noticed that he hadn't used his pet name for her or any affectionate suffix.  
Usagi just gulped, unable to bring herself to speak.  
Mamoru finished looking Usagi over, then looked around at everyone else. "I was going to guess that this was some sort of sick joke, but you're all way too tense for that."  
At that point Rei finally got up to Usagi's boyfriend, and angrily shoved him inside before she slammed the door shut. "Idiot! What did I tell you? Now you've just made things worse!" Rei accused.  
Mamoru continued ignoring her even as he regained his footing. "So... what happened?" He asked finally, his eyes locked on Usagi's.  
"Usagi was kidnapped a few days ago," Makoto began. "When we figured out she'd been taken, we immediately left to rescue her, and when we found her... she was like this."  
Mamoru frowned. "I see. And what's 'this' like?"  
"I-I'm not very d-different," Usagi mumbled finally, looking down at the floor as she tried to get her emotions under control. "Well... on the outside. I feel the same and look the same, but..."  
Usagi trailed off weakly, and Rei sighed. "You'd have to ask Ami for the specs, and she looks a little sloshed right now, but Usagi's supposedly more machine than not. The gadgets and little hatches and things pretty much just appear when she wants them to." She nodded toward the cybernetic blonde. "Go ahead. Show him the hole in your stomach or something."  
"I... I can't really... um..." Usagi's face turned red as she tried to think of something to do, but everytime she arrived at a solution, she found herself too afraid to do it.  
"She's blushing," Mamoru noted, not to make fun of her, but to again cast into doubt the idea that she was part robot.  
Ami nodded. "Her skin is a polymer that's been threaded with nerves and energy circuits. It's responsive to heat, and changes color based on nerve signals that would normally adjust blood flow. Her body works just like before, in pretty much every way."  
Usagi gulped, and was going to try again to speak her mind, when text appeared in her plane of vision, this time in an uncomfortably bright red color.  
Warning: Emotional instability has resulted in proximity overheat in facial area. Forced cooling flush activated.  
"Huh? Whazzat mean?" She mumbled, taken off-guard.  
_Chnk!_ Small slits opened on Usagi's arms, legs, and neck, causing everyone in the room to flinch backward in surprise.  
_PSHOOOOOoooooooo..._ Hot gases blasted from the vents, and Makoto, who was the closest, caught one of the jets right in her face, causing her to fall over backwards and start coughing.  
"..." Ami stared at the scene blankly, watching Makoto shake her head dizzily while trying to clear her lungs. "Okay, yeah. Then there's that." The others turned to look at her. "What? I said 'pretty much' every way! Don't get on MY case!"  
"This is... this is unbelievable..." Mamoru shook his head. "Who did this? Why would anybody do this?"  
"We're working on that," Rei said immediately. "And we have some leads. It's even possible to reverse the process... maybe."  
"We need your help for that!" Minako said, wanting to throw in her own thoughts to make sure he knew Usagi had all her friends behind her.  
Makoto coughed into her fist a few more times, and then settled right back down next to Usagi. "Even if it can't be reversed, we have to get these jerks back for what they did! Nobody screws around with our princess!"  
Mamoru stared at Usagi, who kept looking down at the carpet, obviously awaiting judgment. "But... this shouldn't have happened..."  
Minako frowned, not expecting such a comment. "Well, that's kind of besides the point, isn't it? It DID happen."  
"No! This can't be!" Mamoru said vehemently. "This isn't in our future! This is all wrong!"  
Seeing the confused looks on the others' faces, Mamoru shook his head. "Our future together, our destiny! This isn't it! How is this going to affect all that? What about Chibi-Usa?"  
"Well... uh... that's really more of a... **long-term** concern," Minako explained, scratching the back of her head. "We were kind of focusing on how this will all work out in, like, the next week or so."  
"Of course that's what you'd worry about," Mamoru allowed, "but I have more to think about than that! What's going to happen to Crystal Tokyo? How can we-"  
"We can still have sex!" Usagi suddenly blurted, causing everyone in the room to jump back in surprise, blushing.  
The ponytailed cyborg took a moment to digest what she had just said, and very quickly the warnings from before returned as her face heated up again.  
"You think THAT'S what I'm worried about?" Mamoru asked irritably. 'Huh. I **was** wondering about that. But even so...'  
"Well, it's a relevant concern, sure," Makoto reasoned, though it was obvious she too had been caught flat-footed. "But can we get back to the main issue? You know, hunting down those responsible and giving them quick, explosive deaths?"  
"Well, I'll do what I can to help, sure," the part-time masked hero said, staring uncertainly at his girlfriend. "But..."  
"But what?" Usagi asked timidly. "What about... about us?"  
Mamoru's expression hardened. "We can talk about 'us' when we get you back to normal."  
Usagi looked slightly hopeful. "And... what if I can't get back to normal, though?"  
"Hell Usagi, I don't know!" The dark-haired man suddenly snapped, causing her to flinch back. "What do you want me to say? 'Don't worry about being a machine, I don't mind'? Well, I **do** mind! I can't be with you like this! You're not even human!"  
Tears started to leak from Usagi's eyes once more. But rather than the raging torrent that resulted from her tantrums, these were slow, heavy tears that stained her cheeks as they ran down to her neck. "But I... I'm still the same person on the **inside**..."  
"No, no you're not," Mamoru said snidely. "You're the same person on the **outside**. Inside, you're a Terminator or something; you're not the same person at all!"  
"Mamo-chan!" Usagi-cried, leaning forward suddenly and reaching out to him, only to see him flinch and back up. "M-M-Mamo... ch-ch..."  
Finally, the pressure became too much for the cybernetic blonde to stand, and she suddenly got up and bolted straight out the front door, nearly plowing Mamoru over as heavy tears rained on the carpet.  
_Shove!_ "Hey! Watch where you're going!"  
Ignoring the unfamiliar man she had knocked into the wall, Usagi dashed down the hall and toward the stairs, unmindful that she was accelerating past the sprinting speed that was generally regarded as the human maximum.

Back in the dorm room, the tension reached its peak as Mamoru regained his footing, shaking his head.  
Rei grit her teeth, and her whole body trembled as she stalked up to the dark-haired man.  
"Go ahead and slap me if you want," Mamoru said suddenly, freezing Rei in her tracks, "but I stand by what I said. That... person," he said the word hesitantly, as if he was about to say something else but thought better of it, "was not Usagi. She wasn't the woman I love, and she certainly isn't the woman I'm going to marry." He crossed his arms over his chest as he stared defiantly at the raven haired girl.  
Said raven-haired girl, who had her right hand held flat in order to give the predicted slap, balled it into a fist instead, preparing to exact a less dramatic but far more painful method of feminine fury.  
The impending violence, however, was interrupted when a man poked his head in the doorway and knocked on the open door to get the inhabitants' attention.  
"Hey. Sorry to interrupt. Sounds like something pretty heavy's going down in here," Snake said, noticing that there were four girls in the room to the one man, and that all four had been glaring at him before the intrusion. 'Ugh. College romance. It's either short and empty, or painfully melodramatic.'  
Ami, Makoto, and Rei gaped, their eyes going wide as they recognized the figure leaning through the doorway. Minako gasped and blushed deeply.  
"Can I help you?" Mamoru asked, not having ever actually met Snake before, and thus not recognizing the terrible danger he was in simply by being within the Texan's line of sight. While Mamoru had dealt with police officers quite often in the past, it had been several years since he had last evaded or spoken with one; most of the Senshi activity that required his presence had ceased, meaning that he would no longer have to flee from officers wondering why there was a masked man bounding across rooftops, and Usagi had turned sixteen nearly four years ago, which was the legal age of consent in Japan.  
"Chiba Mamoru?" Snake asked, pointing to the only male in the room. The part-time hero nodded, a guarded expression etched on his face. "I'm Lieutenant Snake of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment. I have some questions to ask you."

Rei gulped as she backed up and sat down next to Makoto, hoping to separate herself from the conflict that seemed to be unfolding before her. "It's him! It's that crazy guy with the beer and the bombs!" She hissed through her teeth.  
"Always an unhealthy combination," Luna murmured, making sure she was quiet enough that their guest couldn't pick up on her speech.  
"Mina-chan, why do you think-" Makoto stopped as she turned to the remaining blonde, finding that she was no longer present. "Huh? Where'd she go?"  
Ami jabbed a thumb behind her. "She ran to the bathroom."

"I have a report here that says you got a few bullets taken outta you recently, Chiba," Snake said, taking out a piece of paper from his pocket and perusing it casually. "Anything you want to tell me about that?"  
Mamoru frowned at the lack of a respectful suffix attached to his name. 'Hmph. Americans.' "No, I really don't. It's of no concern to the police."  
"It's of no concern to the police that an apparently upstanding citizen got nailed in each leg?" Snake asked, raising an eyebrow. "I have the X-rays here in the file. No WAY these got in you by accident. Nice caliber too. Looks like a sniper round. That isn't equipment you can pick up at the local black markets. I wanna know what, who, when, where, and how."  
"I have nothing to say to you," Mamoru said evenly, not noticing as the three girls behind him shook their heads and gave furious "don't do it!" gestures by waving their arms appropriately.  
Snake shrugged. "All right. In that case, would you care to explain how the entry wounds from these projectiles disappeared before you got to a surgeon?" The police officer asked, tucking the folder under his arm and cocking his head to one side. "It's not really, ya know... feasible that a bullet wound that severe could have healed so completely before the bullet itself was removed. Some would think that unnatural forces were at work... and, well, obviously that's where I come in," he explained, smiling pleasantly.  
The Senshi and Luna held their breaths as the tension reached its peak.  
"I don't have to explain anything," Mamoru said defiantly. "If you don't have a warrant to arrest me, then you may leave, Snake-san."  
Snake sighed regrettably. "I see. That's unfortunate." _Blam!_  
The others in the room stared slack-jawed as Snake ripped his sidearm from its holster and blasted Mamoru in his left thigh, sending the younger man down onto the ground screaming.  
"GWWWAAAAUGH! MY LEG! YOU SHOT ME IN THE LEG!"  
"Yes. Yes, I did," Snake said, quite satisfied with the turn of events. "Oh, if anybody asks, this was an unavoidable outcome, all right?"  
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!" Mamoru yelled, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes as blood flowed onto the carpet.  
"I'm a victim of circumstance," Snake said, shrugging. "I've been instructed to extract information from a subject who won't cooperate peacefully. If Chikiko were here instead of me she could probably charm the facts out of you, but I'm a man, so violence is my first and only alternative." Planting his fists on his hips (one of them still gripping the Desert Eagle pistol), Snake tried again. "So, what can you tell me about who shot you? And what about that superhuman healing thing?"  
"GO TO HELL!" Mamoru screamed, clutching his leg in agony.  
"Please, after you," Snake countered. _Blam!_  
A gargled cry emerged from Mamoru's lips as hot lead bored into his right thigh.  
"Let's see... I think I'll go around the body twice, hitting the limbs. Then I'll start with non-vital organs in the middle torso. You only need one kidney, right?"  
"You... you sadistic..." Mamoru gasped, rolling around on his back in pain.  
At this point, the others in the room could no longer remain quiet. "Are you really a police officer!" Rei yelled, standing up in Mamoru's defense. Sure, she had been ready to pound the jackass a moment before, but a bullet in each leg (again, apparently) was a bit more punishment than she felt he deserved.  
"Well, I just walked into someone's room and shot a guy twice in order to get a confession," Snake reasoned, rubbing his chin. "Which means I'm either a police officer or a psychotic criminal."  
"Apparently, those two occupations aren't mutually exclusive," Ami said, still buzzed enough from her earlier drinking to speak her mind when it wasn't really a good idea.  
Snake chuckled. "Yeah, I get that a lot." Then he looked back down at Mamoru. "Okay. Ready to talk now?"  
"I... it... I can't..."  
The American frowned. "Huh? I'm having some trouble hearing you. Did you say 'Yes Officer-sama, I'll tell you everything, please don't hurt me anymore'?"  
Mamoru clenched his teeth against the pain as he finally nodded.  
"Good! Let's start with the healing thing. So are you a mutant or what?"  
Mamoru stretched his neck to looked pleadingly at the girls, but they just shook their heads frantically and made shushing gestures.  
"I..." the part-time hero squeezed his eyes shut shamefully, knowing that it would only take one more bullet to force a confession out of him. All he could do was make it out of here with both his arms working. "I'm Tuxedo Kamen... the guy who fights alongside the Sailor Senshi..."  
Snake frowned. "Oh... that's lame. I was hoping you were an alien or something. Oh well." He shrugged. "And how did you get shot?"  
"I was trying to help the Senshi..." Mamoru gasped out, "and was standing outside a tall building... I think it was... the headquarters of some organization... the DA-something-or-other... Suddenly someone shot me in the leg. Then, when I tried to get up, they shot my other leg. I don't know who it was or why they did it."  
Snake remained silent for a long time. "Oh! Oh yeah!" Then he slapped the back of his head. "Ha! How's that for irony! I was the one who shot you in the first place!"  
_Crash!_ The Senshi and the one moon cat present met the carpet face-first. Mamoru just groaned.  
"Huh! You know, I THOUGHT this whole scenario seemed strangely familiar!" Then Snake frowned again. "But still, what a boring story. You made me waste my time and ammo trying to hide THAT? I have half a mind to shoot your arms anyway!"  
The Texan officer turned away in disgust. "Oh, and don't bother complaining to my superiors about this mess," he said as he started to walk out.  
Through the blinding pain, against his better judgment, Mamoru yelled out. "Oh? And what's gonna stop me?"  
Snake blinked and turned his head. "Why, nothing. I can't stop you." Then he changed the subject. "By the way, I tracked you here by following your car. It's pretty nice. Luxury import, right? I don't really know what kind, cars aren't really my thing." He shrugged. "It would be a real shame if ten pounds of plastic explosives suddenly blew it to a few slivers of melting steel. And it would TOTALLY suck if you happened to be in it at the time this INCREDIBELY unlikely event MYSTERIOUSLY occurred." He turned his head away. "Not that I'm threatening you or anything of that sort. Just making conversation. Toodles!" _Slam!_

Mamoru groaned pathetically.  
"Well? Don't just stand there! Someone call for a stretcher or something!" Rei shouted, startling Ami out of her horrified trance.  
"Oh! Right! Right away!" The blue-haired girl said, snatching up the phone.  
"Wow... that was pretty intense," Makoto mumbled, looking at the incapacitated, bleeding man as if in a daze. "I guess you should be careful what you wish for, huh?" Rei winced; apparently the two of them had been on the same wavelength.  
Luna sweatdropped. "Thank goodness Usagi left; there's no telling what she'd have done if she'd seen that."  
_Knock! Knock! Knock!_  
Rei frowned. "That was fast..." then she looked over at Ami, who shook her head, and then shrugged. "Huh... Come in!"  
_Bam!_ Snake burst back into the room, drew his pistol, and aimed it at Mamoru.  
_Blam! Blam!_  
"AAAAGHAUOW! MY ARMS! _Sob!_ WHY!" Mamoru cried, now bleeding significantly from all his limbs.  
"Sorry about that," Snake apologized, "the half of my mind that really likes shooting things isn't easily ignored. Bye." Turning around once again, Snake walked out the door and closed it behind him.

"Okay... I'm pretty sure we're obligated to transform and take him out, now," Makoto said, frowning as the Mamoru's bloodstains started spreading faster through the carpet.  
"YOU go," Rei said, shuddering. "I'm not getting anywhere near that guy. He's a complete-"  
_Bam!_  
Those that remained in the room flinched at the sound of a door being thrown open, only to realize that this time the sound had come from within the dorm.  
"Hey! Where'd he go? Where's Snake?" Minako asked.  
Rei was about to answer her question in an appropriately dry and sarcastic manner, but she nearly bit her tongue once she saw her friend. Minako had completely dolled herself up, with extra layers of makeup and light jewelry, such that she reminded the others distinctly of western models portrayed in popular import magazines (which happened to be very popular with Minako, coincidentally). She was wearing a denim miniskirt, and a spaghetti-strap blouse that Rei had seen often while the promiscuous young woman was out "hunting for meat".  
"Wha... But... Why..." Rei started to mumble, but was cut off when Minako frowned and interrupted.  
"Why'd you let him leave so quickly? Geez!" The blonde girl muttered, quickly racing to the door.  
_Crunch!_ "OW!" Mamoru shouted, having the poor fortune to have had his hand lying uselessly in Minako's path.  
"Oh, stop whining and get off the floor," Minako mumbled absently, not really paying attention to the dark-haired man or his predicament as she darted into the hallway.  
_Slam!_

"Oh-kaaay..." Rei said, wincing as the wounded man before rocked slowly on his back, whimpering. "You know, I had the distinct impression that Mina-chan had more sense than that."  
"Reality has a way of hitting you where it hurts," Makoto admitted. "Though you're right. This is bizarre, even for her."  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snake whistled to himself as he walked down the hall, writing down a few notes on the printout of Mamoru's police record.  
All around him, students hesitantly poked their heads out of doorways trying to figure out what had happened and where the loud noises had come from (as guns were relatively rare in Japanese society outside of games and movies, it didn't strike them as the most likely culprit). Several of them requested Snake's attention as he passed by in order to ask about the disturbance, but the American freely ignored them, keeping his head down without making eye contact.  
"Hey! Snake-san! Wait!" Came a feminine voice from behind him.  
Snake once again ignored the voice, though he did notice that he was being called for by name.  
"Lessee... All in all, I've just gotta note his alternate identity in his file. No real need to record details about the shooting. Either shooting," Snake mumbled to himself. "Also, I should tell the surgeon that he'll probably be getting some repeat business."  
Minako finally caught up to the police officer, and quickly swung around in front of him while smiling widely.  
"Oh! Hi! I'm glad I caught you! I guess you didn't hear me!"  
Snake stopped, not quite willing to actually walk into the girl in his effort to dissuade conversation. "Actually, I did. I was trying to ignore you. What do you want?" He asked neutrally, looking bored and entirely uninterested in Minako's enticing outfit.  
Unperturbed by his attitude, Minako extended her hand in a typical western greeting. "Hello! My name is Minako Aino! I was surprised to see you!" She said in English, hoping to surprise him with her fluent English skills.  
"Fabulous," Snake deadpanned, sticking with Japanese. "I'm not a tourist, I'm a police officer. Unless you want me to shoot something, stop bothering me."  
"Ha ha! I guess you're right! Sorry about that!" Minako sweatdropped, realizing that he didn't seem to be picking up on her motives like most men did. 'Gotta flash a little more cleavage...' "Hey! Why don't you let me show you around campus, Snake-san?"  
"Because I'm busy and any time spent here amongst the drunk and fornicating leaders of tomorrow is time completely wasted," Snake answered immediately. "Will you move now?"  
"Don't be like that!" Minako said, taking hold of his hand and gesturing toward the exit. "Come on, there's this great steakhouse down by the quad! Let's get some lunch together!"  
"I'm sure that given time, I could think of **something** I would enjoy less, but right now I-" Snake began.  
"Get out of the way! Get out of the way!" Someone suddenly shouted, and Minako and Snake were shoved apart toward opposite sides of the hall as two med students carrying a stretcher raced through the dorms, a professor jogging behind them to keep up.  
Minako blinked in surprise and stared at the procession, having only seen such a thing during incidences of overdrinking and overdoses at the more unrestrained parties that she tried to stay away from. "Wow, that must be serious. There wouldn't be any parties held at this time of day, so it must be a bad accident. Or maybe even a fight! Scary!" Minako turned back toward Snake. "Hey, you're an officer; you should go-Hey! Where are you going?"  
Snake continued his brisk pace toward the exits, though Minako noticed he was sweatdropping for some reason.  
"Hey, wait! What's wrong? Come back!"  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Usagi was no longer aware of how long she had been crying, how far she had gone, or even her exact location.  
Though it had been quite some time since she had stopped running at full speed and plowing people over, she was now wandering the streets aimlessly, her head held low as tears continued slowly dripping to the sidewalk below.  
Occasionally some concerned person would try to get her attention, either out of concern for her troubles or concern for her safety, as the girl moved in a swaying, uncertain fashion, as if in a daze. And in that daze, their words didn't reach her, as a thousand thoughts, memories, and emotions flooded and collided chaotically in her head.  
Anger, pain, sorrow, self-loathing, disgust, regret; they all threatened to drown her as she mentally cursed the metal framework in her fabricated body as well as its creator, over and over and over again. Her mind was her own, and her senses, for the most part, did not lie. But her body was an illusion, a mockery of humanity. She wasn't human. She was hardly a living being.  
She was angry at Mamoru for rejecting her, sure. She was angrier at the culprit who had arranged her kidnapping for precipitating that rejection. She was even a little angry at her friends, as unfair as that was, for letting this happen to her and then coming to the rescue the day after, when it was already too late.  
Mostly though, she was angry at herself. Angry at her weakness for losing to the redheaded woman with the robotic cat ears. Angry at her meekness for whimpering and fleeing when a few words, a loving gesture, or a display of inner strength may have changed Mamoru's mind. And angry at her cowardice for accepting Mamoru's rejection so easily, and letting herself be sent spiraling into depression by his admittedly rational reaction.  
Part of her just wanted to accept his fear and uncertainty and move on; it certainly wasn't the first time he'd turned his back on her, though the reason made a lot more sense this time. Given a little while, maybe he'd give her another chance. Or maybe she'd have to find someone else. Destiny dictated that they be together, but then, destiny had conveniently forgotten to bring up that she vented exhaust when she got nervous enough, so who could say?  
Another part of her, the part that tended to yield to emotion and dispense with logic, wanted out; nothing good could come of the twisted machine her body had become, and she had to make every effort to change it back, no matter what it took. Only then, when she had regained her humanity, would she regain her life, her love, her future throne, and the trust and admiration of her friends. As she was now, she was a monster, a freak of nature. The kind of thing she had fought and destroyed without a second thought.  
Another part of her was really trying very hard to get her to wake up and pay attention, especially as there seemed to be a car headed right toward her that hadn't made any effort to slow down or blow its horn.  
_WHAM!_

Ranma jerked his head away from his meal as he heard the sound of an impact across the street.  
"What? What was that?" The pigtailed cop asked, his view of the accident being obscured by pedestrians and parked cars.  
The owner of the ramen cart shook his head sadly, as he had a better view of the street. "Doesn't look like neither the girl nor the driver was paying attention... that car hit her straight-on."  
Ranma winced and stood up, quickly scanning the street for the accident.  
"Wait... she's getting up? Huh. Looks like she's okay," the vendor said, mystified.  
Ranma frowned as he watched the proceedings, trying to determine if he should intervene or contact help.

"OhmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod," the woman driver said, nearly falling over herself in panic as she scrambled outside her car to stare at the twitching blonde girl on the street. "I'm so sorry! I-I didn't... I mean... I was on my phone, and... oh my God, please forgive me!"  
The ponytailed girl below slowly started to move, placing her hands on the asphalt so that she could push herself up off the ground.  
"Oh no! Please! Let me call an ambulance right away! Please don't move!" The woman said frantically, rummaging inside her car and coming out with the cellular device that had started this whole mess.  
Usagi ignored her and slowly rose from the ground, her entire body aching, but completely functional. Then she slowly turned her head and stared at the car that had hit her.  
Smoke was pouring from the hood of the small, green Mitsubishi, and Usagi could see that her body had left a thick dent in the middle of the bumper, and caused enough damage to rattle the engine and pop the hood.  
_Sniffle!_ "My leg isn't even that sore..." she mumbled sadly, noting that while her limbs throbbed, the pain didn't seem to increase with movement or indicate the severity of the damage.  
_Beep!_ A short, sharp noise that only she could hear heralded the damage report, presented in the same function as her profile scans.  
Trauma classification: medium-level concussive damage incurred. No serious structural damage indicated. Total systems down: 0. Kinetic dampers functioning at 91. Total damage: negligible.  
"What are you doing?" The woman asked the younger girl, who was sniffling frequently while staring at her car. "You shouldn't be standing! I'll get the paramedics down here right-"  
"IT'S NOT FAIR!" Usagi suddenly bellowed, causing the driver to jump back in surprise.  
_CRUNCH!_ Then the ponytailed cyborg smashed a fist into the front of the car, causing the engine hood to fold up like paper.  
"Wha... Bu... How..." the woman stammered.  
"Why do these things happen to me?" Usagi cried.  
_Smash! Crunch! Wham!_ She started beating furiously on the offending vehicle as she sobbed, crumpling the frame like a styrofoam cup while the engine itself was smashed to bits and pieces that bounced onto the ground in loose clumps of debris.  
The woman fell backward onto her rear, and then she quickly scrambled away, leaving her cell phone lying on the ground even as the emergency technicians asked for the nature of the situation. The surrounding pedestrians all followed the woman's example, turning away and running for their lives.  
"All I ever wanted was a normal life!" _Crash!_ "I just wanted to go to school, get a job, get married, and have kids!" _Bash!_ "But NO! I'm always being turned into a superhuman or fighting evil or walking into traps or rescuing my fated lover or saving the world or being REBUILT AS A F!ING CYBORG!"  
Grabbing the most solid and complete chunks of the car's hood that remained with both hands, Usagi slowly hefted the vehicle into the air, until finally she was holding it straight upward, small pieces of ruined engine and shattered frame raining down around her.  
_Ch-Chak!_ Her forearms split apart into a number of parallel bars, the skin-like covering seeming to evaporate, and a pair of cylindrical cores within her arms glowed a bright yellow. _Vwooooooooo..._  
_SCREEEEE-YAAAAH!_ An ear-rending screech echoed through the streets as twin lances of yellow disruptor energy blasted upward through the doomed vehicle, utterly disintegrating it in the process.

"Huh. That's a new one," Ranma murmured, scratching his head as he watched the cyborg in the middle of the street slump to her knees, crying.  
The ramen vendor gulped, ducking down behind the edge of his cart. "Hey! Why don't you go do something? You're one of those crazy zombie-killing cops, 'aintcha?"  
Ranma nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess I am. I really should take care of this."  
Then he turned toward the vendor. "But I'll need to requisition a bowl of ramen first."  
"Wh-What? Why?" The vendor asked, wondering why the pigtailed man was worrying about food at a time like this.  
"Never mind why! Hurry it up!" Ranma snapped, crossing his arms over his chest as he gazed at the young woman sitting in the street.

Usagi continued sniffling for a few more minutes, keeping her head down as people fled the scene as quickly as they could.  
On some level Usagi was aware of what she'd done, and was horrified; that woman, careless as she was, didn't deserve to have her car disintegrated and her wits scared out of her. She had obviously been sorry about the accident, and it wasn't as if she'd caused more damage to Usagi than Usagi had caused her car.  
However, she couldn't muster the will to get up. So she simply sat there, in the street, waiting for some authority to pass judgment upon her.  
She didn't have to wait nearly as long as she'd thought.  
"Hey there. Usagi-san, right? Ramen?"  
Blinking in surprise, Usagi looked up behind her, and then gasped.  
"Hey! You're... uh... Saotome-san! Wh-What are you doing here?" The blonde asked in surprise, finally coming out of her daze at seeing the man who had rescued her before.  
"Well, I sorta had to investigate when I saw the huge energy beam. That's my territory," Ranma said casually, sitting down on the curb across from her with two bowls of ramen in his hands.  
Usagi winced. 'So he saw the whole thing...' "So this is it, huh? The DAPC takes me in again..."  
"Nah, don't worry about it," Ranma said, holding out a ramen bowl for her to take. "Were you arrested by our department before? I don't recognize you. How long ago was it?"  
Usagi winced again. She had been Sailor Moon when she had been arrested, and thus the officers wouldn't be able to connect her to her alter-ego (not that she had met Ranma then anyway). "It's... complicated." Then she frowned. "Wait... you don't seem very surprised to have seen that. Why wouldn't you arrest me?"  
Ranma shrugged. "Well, I'm **not** very surprised. And for a cyborg, you're alright, so I don't have to take you in."  
Usagi's eyes widened. "You know I'm a cyborg?"  
"Well, yeah. The energy blasts kinda gave it away, though I had my suspicions back in the lab where I found you." Ranma answered, taking up some chopsticks and splitting them in his hands.  
She sighed and stared down at the murky broth that soaked the noodles in her food. "Hmph. **I** didn't figure it out until today."  
"Really?" Ranma asked, scratching his head. "Wow. I always thought that being part machine was just one of those things you really couldn't miss. Y'know, like walking on a crutch. Didn't you have to get turned into a cyborg in the first place?"  
"Yeah, well, I was out at the time," Usagi said bitterly, still just staring at her food. "And it's just been so... complicated since then."  
Giving a painful groan, the blonde girl began to recount her troubles. "I'm still not sure how it happened, but now that it did, my life is OVER! I mean, a cyborg can't just act like she's just another college girl! Especially if I end up flipping out again and blasting stuff in a moment of emotional hardship!"  
She leaned back and stared up at the cloudy sky, propping her body up with her arms. "My boyfriend has already pretty much left me, but can I really blame him? He's right; I'm not human anymore. Even if I look the same and feel the same to the touch, how can I expect him not to care? I can't honestly say I wouldn't do the same if our positions were switched, though if I decided to dump him, I'd be a little more sensitive about it."  
Then she massaged her forehead with her hand. "And what about my family? God, I haven't even thought about that! Even if robots are new to me, I'm still used to handling weird stuff. But what's Mom and Dad going to say when they find out that I'm part machine? What if they don't believe I'm really Usagi? They might think I'm some kind of robot trying to mimic her or something."  
Shaking her head, Usagi sat up straight once more and turned toward Ranma. "I know I can't really ask you to understand what I'm going through, but... you can see what the problem is, right?"  
_Slurp!_ Ranma sucked up and swallowed a batch of noodles, then quickly wiped his mouth before answering. "Nope. I wasn't listening."  
"Grk!" Usagi nearly facefaulted, but managed to catch herself before she spilled the ramen in her lap. "What? Why not?" The blonde complained, a vein popping up on her head (don't ask me to explain how this occurs on a cyborg). "Hey, I'm a victim trying to work through my problems, here! If you're not going to help, then at least listen to me!"  
Ranma slurped up another wad of noodles, then pointed at Usagi's bowl with his chopsticks. "Try the ramen. This stuff is great."  
"How is RAMEN supposed to fix my life?" Usagi said irritably, turning her head away.  
"Obviously, it can't," the police officer said, "but it does taste really good. Eat."  
Usagi frowned deeply, but finally took up her own chopsticks and split them in two.  
_Slurp!_ Chewing up the noodles, Usagi swallowed, and then nodded slowly. "Wow. That **is** good."  
"Toldja," Ranma said, smirking. "This guy makes the best ramen I've had since I was in high school. Better yet, it's free for cops. I come here almost every day."  
"Wow. That's nice. I wish I could-" Usagi stopped and shook her head furiously. "Wait a minute! Why are we talking about food when my life is in a shambles?"  
"Well, for one thing, it's more interesting than your problems," Ranma said honestly. Upon seeing Usagi glare at him, he just shrugged. "Well, whaddya want from me? Getting dumped, fitting in, and being accepted by your family is pretty normal stuff to have to deal with. Hell, I had all those problems when I was younger, and I didn't get disruptor cannons outta the deal!"  
Usagi blinked in surprise, then looked skeptical. "Really? YOU had trouble with all that?"  
Ranma nodded. "Yup. Fiancee left me for another guy, pretty much everybody in school and probably the whole district hated me, and in order to make my parents happy... well, like I said, it's not nearly as interesting as talking about food."  
"Hmmm..." Usagi once again stared down into her ramen. "Still, you didn't have to deal with being half robot."  
"I had to deal with being half **something**, but that's another story," Ranma mumbled. "Besides, is being a cyborg really that bad?"  
Usagi snorted. "Of course it is!" Then she took another long slurp of ramen noodles.  
_Gulp!_ "Well, actually, being a cyborg isn't that bad, but the stigma is killing me!" The blonde girl admitted, shaking her head.  
"Yeah, well, the local cyborgs aren't much for public relations," Ranma said apologetically.  
"Ha ha," Usagi mumbled sarcastically, unaware that he was being serious. "I just wish I could get my hands on the people who did this to me and make them change me back!"  
_Slurp! Gulp!_  
"Well, maybe I wouldn't make them change me back right away," Usagi said, looking up thoughtfully. "You know, now that I think about it, there could be a lot of positives to being a cyborg. But still, it'd be nice to know that I always have the option."  
"What kind of positives?" Ranma asked.  
"I can turn on televisions without a remote, dispense candy from my arm, shock people who get on my nerves, and I think Ami-chan said I even have satellite radio," Usagi paused to take in another mouthful of ramen. "When you get right down to it, besides my social problems, the cyborg thing's worked out really well for me. I feel great and get to keep all the same senses and everything. I mean, I wouldn't have thought that a cyborg would even be able to TASTE food like this! And I'm durable, too! That car barely scratched me!"  
Raising the bowl to her lips, she quickly gulped down the rest of the ramen noodles, and then the broth. Then she wiped her mouth with her arm.  
"But there ARE still those social problems," Usagi said, sighing as she stared into the empty bowl. "I mean, how am I supposed to get a husband as a cyborg?"  
"Feh, don't worry about it," Ranma scoffed, finishing off his own ramen bowl. _Gulp!_ "Even if you are metal on the inside, you look cute enough. There are plenty of guys out there who only care about looks, y'know?"  
Usagi blinked, and blushed slightly. "You think so? You... You think I'm cute?"  
"Sure you are. And besides the whole manic-depressive car smashing thing, you seem nice enough, too," Ranma said, taking Usagi's bowl with his and stacking them at his side.  
Usagi remained silent for a long time, staring down at the street. "Hey, Saotome-san?" She asked, raising her head to look at the police officer.  
"Call me Ranma."  
The blonde nodded. "Ranma-san... when you... when you lost your fiancee, and you didn't fit in... well... what did **you** do about it?"  
Ranma looked surprised by the question, but answered quickly. "I left in disgust and joined a bunch of lunatics parading around as police officers."  
Usagi sweatdropped. "Ah. And how has that worked out?"  
"Really well, actually." Ranma shrugged. "I wouldn't recommend it for everyone; it's a pretty brutal job, but I get a lot of respect for being a good fighter, and the pay is great." Then he grinned, and pointed across the street. "Plus, like I said, there's the free ramen. Want me to get us some more?"  
Usagi smiled softly. "Yes, please. I'd like that."  
Ranma took the bowls and got up, walking across the street toward the vendor who was still looking nervously at Usagi.  
Said blonde cyborg stared at the pigtailed man's back, smiling thoughtfully.  
"Hmmmm... DAPC, huh?"

Vampires staked (well, you know, dead. For real): 4  
Vampires captured: 1  
Ghouls slaughtered: 22  
Supporting heroes shot (again): 1 (though he got shot a lot more this time. While untransformed, yet)  
Civilian vehicles destroyed: 1

An explanation on vampires:  
I feel it's necessary to explain the exact capabilities of the vampires that will be appearing in this and future chapters of Millennium. Usually I wouldn't feel it's necessary to explain the qualities of such well-known spooks, but the particulars of vampiric abilities and weaknesses vary widely, and will be used at length, and I feel that a full explanation of the "controversial" points is necessary.  
The vampires I use are primarily based upon the vampires of the Hellsing manga, who exhibit certain qualities that I feel make them more human and less monster than some other versions. I will explain all those qualities I feel are relevant here.  
These vampires:  
1) Are not vaporized by direct sunlight of any degree. At worst they become extremely sick and pass out until nightfall. Otherwise, it simply weakens them until they're no stronger than a human. Being out in the day but not in the sun will still weaken them, but not as much.  
2) Can be killed by conventional weapons. If the heart or head is completely destroyed or removed, the vampire dies. With weaker, "freshly turned" vampires this is much easier than with experienced vampires, as they don't possess short-term regeneration. Once the vampire is able to heal wounds immediately, it is much harder to completely destroy the heart or head, as it will keep regenerating until the vampire runs out of energy to heal itself. Using silver or blessed weapons, or impaling the vampire so that it can't regenerate can circumvent the regeneration, though even this might not work against the most powerful vampires.  
3) Have blood in their bodies. And while their hearts don't beat, their blood DOES flow. This is evidenced by the prevalence of vampire sex. In order to have heterosexual intercourse, the male needs an erection. The erection requires the flow of blood. By extension, I deduce that vampires can also blush, so don't give me any flak about it.  
4) Turn virgins of the opposite gender into vampires, and non-virgins into ghouls. This is caused by bite only, and the victim must be mortally wounded or killed, but not decapitated or have the head or heart significantly damaged. This is in contrast to the Hellsing series, in which every damn thing that gets in a vampire's way would become a goul if it got bitten. Or scratched. Or SHOT. Ghoul victims turn into ghouls in the same manner, so long as the ghoul mortally wounds the victim and doesn't damage/eat the heart or head.  
5) Do not have to sleep in coffins holding the soil of their birth or any of that nonsense. That's stupid.  
6) Vampires can eat whatever they want, but only human blood will give them energy and replenish their strength. Thus, they CAN drink soda or eat burgers if they like the flavor, but it's mostly a waste of time. Also, alcoholic drinks do not effect them, as alcohol is a poison and vampires are immune to all poisons.  
7) Will not melt or get burned or anything of the sort from exposure to garlic. Garlic does, however, cause a severe and immediate reaction similar to allergies that weaker vampires find unbearable. A vampire suffering from close exposure to garlic will be disoriented, erratic, and probably blind, while their senses of touch, smell, taste, and their supernatural "sixth sense" are disabled due to the overpowering nature of the garlic.  
8) Are not weakened by the appearance of a cross, though the weaker ones do show unusual contempt and hatred for the symbol.

End Chapter 3


	4. Recovery

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."  
- Lily Tomlin

"Knives were invented because it was too hard to kill a person with your bare hands. Man then invented guns because we got too lazy to run up to our enemies to stab them. Then we invented bombs so that we could actually sit down comfortably while killing. ICBMs were the next logical step, since some people get airsick. If you ask me, the limitations of military technology have nothing to do with efficiency, but convenience."  
-Tiro Yamazaki

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen. Assuming I don't die in a horrible accident. Or go to college.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **techniques or emphasis**, 'thoughts', writing, (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 4  
Recovery

Hotaru looked up at the mountainside pensively as she tried to climb faster, gasping as bits of rock and sharp branches scratched at her legs and arms.  
Through the larger bushes she could see the two other girls in her group making swift progress among the large rocks further up, and the part-time Senshi whimpered; they were taller than her, and both were on the tennis team. There was no way she'd catch up!  
"Anyo-san! Nigimata-san! Wait up, please!" Hotaru begged them, grabbing onto a fragile section of brush and hauling herself up. She gasped again when she felt small spines from the bush stab into her skin, but she squeezed her eyes shut and bore it, scrambling onto the next rock. 'Why would they be holding a barbeque way out on a mountain hiking trail, anyway? This hurts!'

Far above, one of the girls glanced back down the mountain as she picked up the tail end of a shout, and she rolled her eyes. "Well, the shrimp's got guts, if not brains. I think she's still following us."  
The other girl snorted and accelerated her pace up the shallow slope she had found near the top. "Then pick up the pace; she can't keep up with us much longer. And if she does, then she'll probably tell sensei about the hot springs party Ryunnosuke's throwing, and then we're ALL screwed."  
Her friend nodded. It was just their luck that they'd get saddled with the class weirdo during their school trip. With a goody-two-shoes freak like Hotaru hanging around with them, not only had their group been uninformed of the more wild events that the other students had been planning, but those they were invited to were in danger of being discovered by the faculty. "Even so, don't you think this is kinda dangerous? I mean, she could kill herself out here!"  
The other schoolgirl snorted. "It's not THAT dangerous. This whole mountain's just a bunch of hot spring resorts and empty forest. If she had a clue, she would have realized that the other side has dozens of roads and stairs to get up here. Once we lose her, she'll just turn around and go back to the inn. She knows the way, she'll be fine."  
Her friend shrugged, accepting the rationale and moving faster up the slope. The only thing worse than being caught going to the party would be making it to the party with the strange, quasi-Gothic healing girl in tow to muck up the festivities.

Further down the mountain, Hotaru felt her heart sink into her stomach as the taller girls cleared a rock outcropping and vanished behind it, moving on to a much shallower slope that she imagined bisected a path somewhere further.  
She slumped down to her knees and drew long, ragged breaths, her energy spent. 'They... They meant to ditch me, didn't they?'  
She sighed wearily once she got her breathing back under control, and then winced when she noticed the tiny gashes and blood smears on her arms and hands. 'I'm so stupid! I should have realized it earlier! Why would they insist on taking a route to dinner through a mountain forest?' She drew her knees up to her chin as she considered the two athletes ruefully. "They could've just told me they didn't want me around, instead of acting friendly and helpful and then leaving me behind."  
In Hotaru's mind, acceptance was something rare and precious, while rejection was something numbing and routine. To mask rejection with acceptance and friendship, even for the purposes of politeness, was far more cruel than bald, open scorn.  
'For one thing, if they hadn't told me they wanted me to come along, I wouldn't be all the way up here,' she thought irritably as she looked at the barely perceptible path she had made up the mountainside. 'Not only am I going to be exhausted by the time I get back, but I'll probably miss dinner.'  
Sighing once more, she started down the mountain kicking up dust and bits of rocks as she stumbled through the bushes and sparse trees below her.  
Now, anybody who regularly deals with mountains can tell you that getting down a mountain is easier than getting up. Hotaru knew this too; it just makes sense. What isn't quite as obvious is that with gravity working for you, a trip down an incline is more dangerous than one going up. One moment of lost balance or a spot of weak ground can easily lead to a potentially lethal tumble.  
Hotaru didn't climb a lot of mountains.  
"Whoa! Oh! Oh! Oh no!" She cried as she slowly teetered forward, her arms windmilling uselessly to try and restore her balance.  
She felt her breathe flee her lungs as she fell over, impacting the hard, rocky ground painfully. But before she could find any sort of purchase on the dirt, her body twisted to the side and began to roll, to Hotaru's growing alarm and dread.

Through the blinding pain and overwhelming panic, a detached aspect of Hotaru's mind reflected upon the likely outcome of this fatal error, and decided that her most immediate regret would be that nobody would be around to witness her demise. For a superheroine like herself, who had been instrumental in saving the world, and for a famed Senshi, never mind Sailor Saturn, the Senshi of destruction who was capable of annihilating entire worlds, to meet her end because she lost her balance and tripped...  
Well, that was the kind of irony that people remembered you for. But not if no one was around to see it!  
She was in the process of wondering when she had acquired an appreciation for such morbid humor when a rough, haggard scratching all over her body alerted Hotaru to a possible means of stopping herself as she realized she was rolling through a bush.  
Keeping her eyes squeezed shut tightly, she flailed her arms about as she continued to roll, grasping desperately for a branch to slow her uncontrolled descent.  
Miraculously, her hand latched onto one of appreciable thickness, and a small spark of hope gleamed in her heart as she tightened her grip as much as possible.  
That hope was extinguished as the branch slipped from her hand, cutting it open in the process.  
Before bitter resignation could set in, however, Hotaru realized that something was wrong. Instead of rolling down a firm, solid slope and being battered by rocks and plants, she was now free-falling through the air.  
'Well, that's just great. Now I get to die from one long fall off a cliff instead of rolling until I break my neck. Spiffy. Wish I'd tripped closer to the edge; at least then it wouldn't hurt so much until I hit the bottom.'  
She could no longer summon the energy to sigh miserably, so she remained silent as she plummeted downward.  
Strangely enough, her second-to-last thought before she reached the bottom of her fall was, 'I guess I won't be able to see Ranma again...'  
That line of thinking was firmly interrupted by her **actual** last thought. 'Wait a minute... there were no cliffs on the mountain.'  
_SPLOOSH!_  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are you sure we should go in there?" Minako asked Rei nervously as they approached the dorm room she shared with Usagi and Ami. "I mean, I really think we should give her more time alone to think, if she needs it."  
Rei snorted. "Moron. Usagi isn't the type of person who ever wants to be alone. She doesn't think; she talks. If we try and let her have some time by herself, she'll just think we're avoiding her." She frowned. "Either that, or she'll just pour her heart out to Luna. Either way, she probably won't forgive us if we don't get to her soon."  
Ami nodded reluctantly as she followed Minako and Rei. Usagi had come back late last night and gone straight to bed with a thoughtful, concerned expression on her face, and without saying anything other than "Good night" to her roommates. The following morning she didn't get up, which was fairly normal, and given that the neo-cyborg had been through significant emotional trauma, her friends had let her sleep. Then she hadn't shown up to a single class. At that point, it was time to be concerned.  
'Not that school is likely a big concern for her now,' Ami mused as they reached the door.  
Rei turned to the other girl and gave them a pointed glance. "Now remember, don't go crazy with the sympathy, okay? If we just make this a huge pity party, then she'll never get off her ass and do anything to fix it. We need to let her know that we're here for her, but we also need her to stand up on her own and get over her problems."  
Minako and Ami both nodded, and the former clenched one hand into a fist before her, looking especially determined. "Right! Let's do this!"

Opening the door without knocking, Rei stepped forward purposefully into the dorm room.  
"Usagi? Are you... here... uh..." She trailed off immediately, unsure what to make of what she was seeing.  
Ami and Minako both blinked in surprise when they emerged from behind the former priestess. Usagi was reclining in the living room chair, her legs resting on the ottoman, and wearing a terry cloth bath robe and a pair of fuzzy rabbit slippers. She was facing the TV, and watching as Makoto, who was dressed in casual jeans and a T-shirt, played Super Smash Bros. Melee on Ami's Gamecube.  
The ponytailed blonde blinked and turned her head. "Oh! Hey guys! What's up?"  
"Er..." Rei mumbled. Inside her head, little chibi-Reis were angrily tearing up reams of paper that held the speech she had prepared to deal with their poor, distraught leader.  
"Huh... are you okay?" Ami asked hesitantly, idly noting that Makoto seemed to be losing the match she was playing, though she had somehow gained the upper hand since they had interrupted.  
"Hm? Oh! Right!" Usagi said, remembering that her life as she knew it had ended just a few days ago. "Yeah, I'm better now. Thanks!"  
"You... You are?" Rei mumbled. Inside her head, the chibi-Reis had gathered at a long executive-style meeting table while one of them pointed at a picture of Usagi's head. The picture had question marks plastered all over it, as well as several phrases such as "Trauma retention? Memory? Emotional complexity? Is there anything inside this skull at ALL?"  
Minako breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good! For a while there we were afraid you'd gone off the diving board!"  
Usagi blinked at that, and was about to correct her fellow blonde, when she stopped to think about the phrase. 'Mental note: Ask Ami if I can swim in this body,' she thought, and was suprised and pleased to see her thought appear in glowing green text toward the top of her field of vision, along with the word "Saved."  
Shrugging, the cybernetic blonde turned back toward the television screen.  
"So..." Ami began uncertainly, "this is what you've been doing? Watching Mako-chan play video games?"  
"No. I'm playing too!" Usagi said, once again turning toward the newcomers.  
Ami frowned. Indeed, once she took another look at the screen, it clearly indicated that two of the four characters were human players. "Uh... but you don't have a controller." Any one of them could see clearly that only one controller was plugged into the console, and that Makoto was using it.  
In response, Usagi just smirked and tapped her head meaningfully.  
"I still say that's cheating!" Makoto growled as she watched Princess Peach slam all three other characters across the screen, including her own character, Samus. "You're not nearly as good when you have to use your hands like the rest of us!"  
"Well, yeah! Everybody always beats me normally!" Usagi complained. On the screen, Peach dodged a perfectly timed screw attack, and then sent Samus sailing with a dashing attack, blowing the bounty hunter off the screen and securing the win.  
"Uh huh... so... you're feeling fine?" Rei mumbled, her left eyebrow twitching. In her head, the chibi-Reis were still at the meeting table, though they had all gathered at one end and were playing strip poker. Usagi's picture sat in a corner, mostly forgotten, though someone had drawn glasses, a moustache, a goatee, and devil horns on the blonde's visage.  
"Oh yeah, much better," Usagi said reassuringly, smiling.  
Makoto sighed in disgust and dropped her controller. "Don't ask me how it happened, either. I just got here a little while ago to check on her, and she just up and asked if I wanted to play something." Then she turned to Usagi. "Hey, can I have another soda?"  
"Oh, sure!" Usagi reached down and lifted one flap of the robe. Then she tapped her stomach.  
_Kachunk!_ A square section of her abdomen opened like a door, and Usagi reached in before withdrawing two glass bottles of Coke.  
For poor Minako, who had done the least mental preparation for dealing with their violated leader (she had been busy trying to figure out where a certain American police officer had run off to and why he seemed immune to her charms), this was quite enough to freak her out, and her hair stood straight as wire rods behind her head in testament to her shock; even her ribbon looked frayed and unnaturally angular.  
When Usagi raised both bottles to the sides of her head, and proceeded to fit them one at a time into her ears before twisting and snapping off the caps, well, that was just too damn much.  
_Thud!_  
Ami turned her head rigidly toward the source of the noise behind her. "Well, we just lost Mina-chan."  
Rei had not frozen up at the bizarre sight, but instead slumped over while rubbing her head. "Your ears are bottle-openers?" She mumbled. In her head, the poker match had evolved in a wild drinking contest, with several naked and half-naked chibi-Reis passed out on the floor or dancing drunkenly on the meeting table, bottles of sake grasped in their hands.  
Usagi frowned at that as she handed an entirely unsurprised Makoto her drink. "No, I don't think so... though they get the job done!" She spent a moment to fish the caps out of her ears, and then took a long sip from her soda.

Ami shook her head to clear it, and promised herself that she'd make a visit to the kitchen cabinet to visit her new friend Jack Daniels as soon as she got the chance. "Okay, well... if you're not still... uh... upset, then... why weren't you in class today?"  
Usagi froze shock-still, her eyes opening wide.  
She remained that way for several seconds.  
This was not ideal, since she happened to freeze in the middle of taking a drink of her Coke. After her cheeks swelled up such that they resembled a chipmunk, the beverage proceeded to spill out around Usagi's lips, showering her robe with soda and generally making quite a mess.  
'Huh. No gag reflex. Have to add that to my notes.' Ami thought as she winced.  
"PTHOOEY!" Usagi's brain suddenly managed a reboot (the others devoted quite some time later to determine the extent to which this was meant literally), and she proceeded to spit out the contents of her mouth, nearly giving Makoto an unexpected shower in the process.  
"Hey! Watch it!" The ponytailed girl complained as she dodged.  
Usagi shook her head violently, then grasped the sides of her skull. "Oh no! I totally forgot about my classes!"  
_Thud!_ Though Ami had already deduced this, it hit Rei hard enough to cause the raven-haired girl to facefault. Unfortunately for her mind, this caused the last of the drunken chibi-Reis within her head to topple over and slam into a wall, knocking the them out cold.  
"And there goes Rei-chan," Ami muttered, deciding that she'd need to enlist the support of her good pal Captain Morgan as well. One can never have too many friends, after all.  
"Aaaaah! What am I gonna do?" Usagi cried. "I had homework due today! And... oh my god! There was a test! I had a math test! NOOOOOOOO!" She began to run around the room in a panic, and began to take off her robe. "I've gotta go! I'll be late!"  
"Usagi-chan... your classes are all over," Ami said slowly, wondering if she should be glad to find that Usagi actually cared about her schooling in the midst of their latest supernatural crisis. When she saw the blonde girl trip and fall over onto her face, bawling, she decided that was a question she could ask her friends later. 'Maybe they'll bring along their local pal Sapporo. Yes, that sounds like a great idea.' "So, you weren't so emotionally distraught that you just couldn't go through your normal day-to-day life any longer? You just forgot?"  
"It wasn't my fault!" Usagi cried as she pushed herself up off the floor. "There was just so much going on, and... and... _Sniffle!_" Then she turned toward Makoto and pointed a finger at her accusingly. "Makoto, you have the same class! Why didn't you tell me? Or call? Or ANYTHING?"  
The Thunder Senshi recoiled. "What? But... B-But I... I didn't know..." she shook her head. "Oh, come on! You were kidnapped, turned into a cyborg, dumped by your future husband, and then you said you even got in a car accident! Who would care about a math test after all that?"  
"Someone who's barely passing that class as it is!" Usagi cried. "If I fail math, my GPA could drop so low that they might kick me out at the end of the year!"  
"Uhm..." Makoto bigsweated as she tried to find a way out of this situation. "Aren't you like, part calculator now?"  
"Not really," Usagi fumed. "I've already checked. For some reason the calculator in my head only measures 'rocket trajectories' and 'ballistic arcs' and weird, useless stuff like that." She cocked her head to one side. "Well, it does do logs. But even with a calculator, I can't figure those out!"  
"Okay, okay, just calm down," Makoto mumbled as she stood up, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "Look, that was an early midterm, so I'm pretty sure your math grade is finished. But if we bring up your world history, composition, and P.E. scores when you take those midterm exams next week, we can at least save your enrollment in this school, right?"  
Usagi frowned, but nodded, her arms crossed over her chest.  
Makoto sighed in relief, then sat down on the arm of Usagi's chair. "I have to admit though, I'm a little impressed. Not only did you get over Mamoru's rejection way better than I thought, but after this whole cyborg thing you're still worried about your studies. A lot of people would... well... their education wouldn't be a top priority."  
Usagi nodded, much of her earlier panic and frustration evaporating. "Yeah, well... I talked it over with someone, and I realized that none of my problems are all that bad."  
Makoto blinked repeatedly, flabbergasted. "They're not?"  
"Well... no, not really," Usagi allowed, lowering her head slightly and twiddling her thumbs. "I mean, sure, I'm really confused right now, and I'm not sure what's what, and what Mamo-chan said really hurt too, but..." She looked up, suddenly determined. "But none of that is really stopping me from getting back up and living my life, right? Things could be worse. Much worse! But I still have my education and my friends my family and a talking cat and my... uh... **a** body! My future hasn't changed, just the path I'm taking!"  
Makoto stared for a long moment, hardly able to believe that this was the same girl who turned into a sobbing wreck whenever somebody insulted her or when all the snacks were eaten before she could get to them. 'But then again, I guess Usagi's strength has always shined brightest when the chips were down. I shouldn't really be surprised that she'd manage to pull through a serious crisis.' She finally smiled. "Well... uhm... what can I say? You go, girl!"  
Usagi nodded, finally smiling again, and she gave the taller girl a thumbs-up. "Right!" Then she turned around. "Hey, we should really get Rei-chan off the floor. She landed in my soda spill."  
Makoto sweatdropped. "Oh. Right. Here, I'll get Mina-chan."  
Usagi grabbed Rei under the shoulders and lifted her up, surprising herself with how easy it was; she felt even stronger than she was as Sailor Moon!  
Makoto, though being much stronger than Usagi had been before her limb bones had been been replaced by pistons, still only possessed human strength, and grunted a bit as she positioned Minako in her arms. "Hey Ami-chan, can you give me a hand here?"  
Then she froze. Usagi too froze, at the exact same time.  
"Hey, where is Ami-chan?" They both asked, facing each other.

_Thunk!_ Their question was answered as the genius in question suddenly stumbled out of the kitchen, falling against the wall and striking it with a mostly-empty bottle of spiced rum.  
"Goddam dragonsh an' their freakin' shtupid lamer shtupid tricksh... that're shtupid...," the bluette slurred, pushing herself off the wall and swaying drunkenly from side to side. "Shtupid bashtard! I hate yah! I hate yah an' yur campin' an' yah rocketsh an' yah kill meh on purpish an' hide near da damn item shpawnsh! Yooh shuck!" Shaking a fist uncertainly at the PC sitting on her desk, she then dove for it, snarling as she began to batter the monitor with her bottle of rum.  
_Whomp! Whomp! Crash! Clunk! Crunch!_

Usagi and Makoto stared at the scene with eyes the size of dinner plates, their hands tightening around their unconscious friends as they watched Ami break the bottle against the monitor screen before trying to stab the keyboard viciously with the jagged remains in her hand.  
Makoto's head snapped to the side to address Usagi. "Let's go let these two rest up in my room."  
"Uh..." Usagi couldn't manage to take her eyes off the horrifying spectacle before her, so she didn't turn toward Makoto when she replied, "Don't you have roommates that'll be home right now?"  
"We'll kick them out."  
"Then let's get the hell outta here."  
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_Vrrrmmmm..._  
Garo sat down cross-legged in the middle of the warded vault, facing away from the gigantic mechanized door as its engine moved it in and then slowly opened it.  
He had not moved much since he had been placed in the vault. This was partially because there was nothing to do were he to get up - the room was a totally bare steel box - but also because he had been trying to conserve energy in order to regenerate his arms and legs, which had all been torn off and eaten by the DAPC's pet monster.  
The vampire's limbs had come back, but as expected, his clothes had not. While the ponytailed man's former outfit had been a clean, well-pressed outfit with long slacks, a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket, that outfit was now missing those lengths of cloth that had contained his lost limbs at the time at which he was being eaten. Thus instead, he was seated in the middle of a huge, dried bloodstain, wearing what appeared to be ragged shorts and a T-shirt that had been torn in half.  
Despite this, the midian commanded a certain strength and dignity as he faced the barren wall of his cell, unmoving as he felt a rush of air and greater circulation with the giant vault door opened.  
"So. You've come again. Do you seek to waste more of my time asking for answers?" The vampire said stonily, his stare burning into the flat steel of his prison. Garo was a bulwark, solid and unyielding even in his enemy's clutches, and would reveal no secrets, no matter what the cost to himself.  
His misplaced defiance and quiet dignity was completely lost on the three individuals outside the vault entrance, standing behind the secondary gate of vertical bars made of solid silver that was unique to vampire and lycanthrope cells.  
"Now remember, there's no reason to conserve ammo here, but out in the field, you can bet it's important," Snake explained. "You can only carry so much gear with you when you go into combat, and the time it takes to reload is all these freaks need to gut you like fish."  
"Did you HAVE to keep me here in HQ for this?" Junko asked irritably as she loaded her submachine gun.  
"Don't snap at ME because you haven't had time to find a new boy-toy," Snake said sharply at the redhead. "You're on the clock, so you should spend it training, not combing the city for your next piece of meat."  
Tiro tried to smile smoothly as he loaded his own weapon, though it emerged as his usual stupid grin. "You know babe, if you're just looking for a good time, I'm always available..."  
"Oh, yeah, desperation. Real turn-on, Yamazaki," Junko groused.  
"Pardon me..."

The three officers diverted their attention from each other, and regarded the undead man on the other side of the bars like one would regard a particularly annoying insect. "WHAT?"  
Garo's voice remained perfectly calm and reasoned as he approached with his arms clasped behind his back. "What, exactly, is the meaning of this?"  
Snake rolled his eyes. "Oh, it's just that Red here hasn't gotten any in a while... well, hasn't gotten any recently. Very recently, anyway. She's a bit of a you-know-what. But that isn't important." Junko turned away and frowned darkly at the wall, but did not contradict her superior.  
"I agree; that's not important at all," Garo said. "I was referring to why you opened my cell. I can only assume, since you're armed, that either someone's coming in or I'm coming out. Am I being transferred?"  
"No," Snake deadpanned. "Now shut up. I'm trying to teach these people." He turned back to his subordinates. "Now, it's important to know that vampires don't like to run; there's a physical limit to how fast two legs can move you, even if they're unusually strong. Thus, your stronger vampires don't usually attack out in the open, but will attempt to fight indoors or in close quarters, where they can jump and rebound off of the walls to add speed to their attack. It's in your best interest then, as less-than-spectacular marksmen, to aim for the wall where you expect the vampire to transfer its energy into the lunge, rather than trying to shoot it out of the air in mid-leap."  
"Pardon me..."  
Snake rolled his eyes. "What now?"  
"Excuse my impatience, but was it really necessary to disturb me in order to give a lecture as to the physical capabilities of vampires?" Garo asked. "Is there anything I'm supposed to do?"  
Snake shrugged in response. "Well, you could run around a bit, if you want. Which you probably do. We just need a live target, that's all."  
Garo blinked. "You mean a live specimen, right?" It made sense to have an actual vampire present while explaining a midian's capabilities, but it did not explain why they were all heavily armed.  
In his defense, the only members of the DAPC he had met so far were Asuka and Ranma, who were generally considered the most sane and rational members of the organization.  
"Sure, whatever." Snake stepped back behind the other two officers. "Now remember, fire in bursts, try not to waste ammo, aim for his landing points. Don't worry about where you hit him, though you should know that ideal targets are the head, arms, or legs. Bullets in the torso won't do anything. Got it?"  
Garo's eyes slowly widened as the two shorter officers nodded. "W-Wait... hold on! What's going on here?"  
"If you haven't figure that out by now, then this is going to be a short practice," Tiro muttered as he stuck his weapon between the openings in the bars. It restricted his aim a bit, sure, but nobody was willing to risk a ricochet off the silver gate.  
"It's all Snake's fault," Junko mumbled as she too aimed her weapon. "Every time we build a training facility, he blows it up!"  
"Not my fault," the Texan declared as he watched his subordinate's aim. "I only used those facilities for training, and they fell apart. I'm not responsible for shoddy construction on the part of the contractors."  
"You're not supposed to use rocket launchers in the firing range!" Junko snapped, turning her head away from her target.  
Snake immediately moved forward to correct her, nudging her head forward. "Keep your eye on the target. Aim low."  
Garo twitched, his hands clenching into fists. "So now Tokyo's finest use their prisoners for **target practice**? Is this the state of human justice now?"  
"Tokyo's finest? Where?" Junko turned around, wondering if there were any normal police officers or Core soldiers that had been through the facility (hopefully, male ones). Snake grabbed the sides of her head and forced her to face forward once again.  
"FOCUS, Chikiko!" Snake growled. "You're going to have plenty of problems keeping your eyes on these freaks when you're not distracted! Now AIM!"  
"Wait a minute! This is all wrong!" Garo protested. "After one interrogation session you're ready to execute me?"  
Tiro looked surprised. "No. We're shooting you because we can use you for practice and you'll get better."  
"And because you're not on payroll; Asuka gets mad when I shoot people who work for us, even if they get better afterward. Yamazaki, when I said aim low, I didn't mean aim at the floor. That's better. Safeties off!" Snake shouted.  
The vampire took several nervous steps back, his mind awhirl with questions and quite a few complaints. "Stop this! This is ridic-"  
"Fire!"  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ranma sighed as he rubbed his eyes wearily, looking slightly haggard.  
Asuka glanced up and noticed this, but said nothing, instead returning to the report he had filed.  
"Hmmm... so, you really don't think this 'Usagi' cyborg is an immediate threat?"  
Ranma shook his head as he brought his focus back onto the matter at hand. "No, I don't think so. She doesn't seem to be involved with the Freedom's Angels at all. She has no criminal past or any suspicious records. She DOES seem to be involved with those Sailor Senshi girls you told me about, but I don't know anything about that. She seems like a completely normal, everyday girl who just happened to get kidnapped and turned into a cyborg."  
Asuka nodded reluctantly. "Though it doesn't make much sense that they'd use some random woman as a subject, there's a lot to be said about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And mad scientists aren't known for being big on details." She recalled easily the first time she had forced Seras to sober up; the medical officer had captured most of the DAPC and made robot copies of all of them... including those officers who were more trouble than they were worth. "Of course, there's the concern that she'll be involved with the FAs from this point on, too. We managed to get her out of their hands, but they'll probably want her back. Which could mean either activating some sort of mind-control device in her head, or sending a small army to capture her." She sighed. "The problem is, of course, that we don't have the staff to institute any sort of observation program. There's the option of assigning you or Kyle as a bodyguard, but again, that kind of leaves us short-handed when we're in the middle of investigating a vampire infestation."  
"Mm-huh," Ranma mumbled as he stifled another yawn.  
Asuka once again noticed, but merely frowned. Finally, she put down the report and shrugged. "Well, if you don't think she'll be causing any trouble, all we can do is wait until she proves you wrong. I'll have you meet with her later for a registration and see if we can hammer out a few more details, but for the most part we'll leave her to her own devices." Then she leaned back in her chair and raised an eyebrow. "Moving on, have the late-night missions been getting to you? You look a little drowsy."  
Ranma blinked in surprise, and then shook his head. "N-No! Nothing like that! I've been getting plenty of sleep... well..." He frowned. "Normally it's not a big deal; being around Snake keeps me awake and on my toes, you know? But yeah, I haven't been very well rested lately. Not that I haven't gotten much sleep, but there's this weird dream I keep having..."  
Asuka nodded silently. 'Snake HAS been gone a while... and I know I didn't send him out on patrol... hmmm.'  
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_Thud!_ Garo hit the metal floor like a wet sponge, blood streaked all over an entire corner of his cell. All around him lay warped, flattened pieces of lead, in stark contrast to the vault's entrance, which was littered with the gleaming discarded shell casings.  
Snake shook his head as both his subordinates detached their empty clips. "That was pitiful. Chikiko, you were five seconds behind Dracula-boy the whole time. You were on your third clip before you even tagged him. Yamazaki, you were just as bad, but you COMPLETELY ignored what I said about preserving ammo! You used seven clips to Chikiko's four; do you think you're going to be carrying that much ammo out in the field?"  
"That's not fair! I was shooting way better than she was!" The lecher insisted. Junko grunted noncomittally.  
"What you did was not 'shooting'. That was called 'pointing the gun in the right direction and hoping really hard.'"  
"Well, it worked, didn't it? He fell down!"  
Snake's shoulders slumped. "This is going to be harder than I thought." He looked up, and crossed his arms over his chest. "All right, you two, that's enough. I'm requiring that both of you put in three hours of training on House of the Dead 4 every day so long as we're still hunting midians. Our current practice dummy looks a little worn out."  
Junko groaned, seeing more of her precious "fun time" go up in smoke. Tiro said nothing, not entirely opposed to playing video games for training instead of being yelled at by the squad gun nut.

As the two officers left, Snake turned back toward the cell, looking thoughtfully at the twitching bullet-ridden body on the floor.  
Then he entered a code on the keypad terminal next to him.  
A loud creaking noise alerted the dazed and wounded vampire on the floor that the secondary gate was opening, removing the final barrier between his armored metal cell and the network of hallways that eventually led to the surface.  
Garo tensed as he considered the possibilities. Though he had lost track of time, his body felt generally sluggish, meaning that it was daylight outside, even if no sunlight could touch him in the basement vaults. This would greatly impede his ability to escape the HQ, even assuming he could make it out of the containment area while weakened. Still, a slim chance was better than no chance...

Snake calmly walked up to the fallen vampire, noting that he had stopped twitching. 'Hmm... he also doesn't seem to be bleeding very profusely... then again, he doesn't have much in the way of blood pressure.'  
"You can get up now. I KNOW that wasn't enough to put you down; those bullets were way too small, and hit all the wrong places."  
In a blur of motion, Garo twisted around, his arm clawing for the American's neck. He had learned from last time; aim for the vital areas and go for the quick kill.  
_Blam!_ Snake's pistol shot ripped through the midian's elbow joint, robbing that arm of the leverage necessary to follow through with the strike as Snake grabbed the offending wrist with his free hand.  
Tossing the spasming limb away, Snake turned slightly and stepped on the limp hand, smirking as the vampire winced.  
"Not looking so high-and-mighty now. Feel free to try with your other arm too; I've got plenty of bullets."  
Garo looked up into the casual, smiling face of the American, and his body began to tremble involutarily.  
'Wh... What is this? Something is very wrong, here!' The feeling of terror that overwhelmed him felt quite different from his experience with the emotion as a human, since his heart didn't pound at all and there was no adrenaline surge, but the general feeling was unmistakable. The feeling of helplessness, the unconscious paralysis of his muscles as his sense of self-preservation burned itself out and robbed him of his strength to resist... Garo could remember with crystal clarity the last time he had felt this way.  
It was three years ago, when an older blonde woman had seduced him into her car before revealing her long, inhuman fangs.  
Vampires were not supposed to feel terror. They knew general fear, insofar as they had a healthy respect for those with the power or knowledge to hurt and/or destroy them, but the suffocating dread he experienced as the human smirked down at him was nothing that an undead man should experience. The ability to inspire this terror in others was the undead's greatest advantage, and the only thing that truly kept them from being fully exterminated by the living populace that was aware of them.  
'I've made a very, very grave mistake,' Garo thought as Snake twisted his foot on his hand. The pain was little more than an irritation, and hardly a distraction from the true source of his fear. 'This one... is different from the girl, or that assassin. Just who ARE these people?'  
"Now, I just have one teensy little question for you. It's nothing big or really important. Just sort of a personal curiosity." Snake kept grinning as he leaned down, his pistol hanging loosely in his grip.  
Garo whimpered. Snake's neck was exposed, lined up perfectly within biting range. His pistol wasn't aimed at any sort of key point on the vampire's body, and the midian's other arm was still completely functional.  
"What... What is it?" Garo squeaked out, helpless, and knowing that he would have been releasing his bowels had his body retained such nervous reactions with its conversion to undeath. 'He came in here and did this to satisfy 'personal curiosity'?'  
The American cocked his head to the side. "Tell me... where does a vampire find suitable virgins in this day and age?"  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Asuka nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that is pretty weird. And these have been keeping you up?"  
Ranma shook his head. "Naw, I'm still asleep, but it's like I wasn't. I'm still tired when I wake up."  
The blue-haired woman crossed her legs as she leaned back, descending deep into thought. "Have you talked to Chikiko about this?"  
Ranma flushed slightly and looked back and forth quickly, as if Asuka's mentioning the name would summon the redhead. "Well, I've tried, but..." He lowered his voice. "Every time I ask if we can talk, she takes my hand and says that we should talk things over in the broom closet. 'For privacy,' she says. And then she tries to take my pants off. It makes it hard to talk like this, you know?"  
The captain's face fell. 'I'm going to have to figure out what's wrong with her soon. She's been getting worse, and it's getting on my nerves.' "Okay, fine. We'll do this without her. I've taken my share of psychology courses." She steepled her fingers under her chin as she leaned forward again. "What seems odd to me is that the dream is so completely clear to you after you wake up. That's not normal."  
She nodded to herself. "You see, sleep is your brain's way of recovering its energy by shutting off most of its functions for a time. If you're conscious enough to remember these images in high detail, then your brain's probably more active than it should be, and the fatigue is starting to catch up."  
"Well, that's just peachy," Ranma grimaced. "So, any ideas about this weird queen lady? This is probably her fault."  
"I can't tell you how to approach that," Asuka muttered dryly. "Though it's my policy that when dead people start talking to you, it's best not to listen to them."  
"So you don't think I'm going crazy?" Ranma asked, mildly surprised.  
The police captain snorted. "Ranma, please, have some faith in your leader. I've seen more shades of crazy than any pychiatric doctor. A few strange dreams, coupled with your ability to discuss them rationally, isn't enough to make me bat an eye."  
"That's great, but if I'm not crazy, then that means that this stupid queen lady is really in my head trying to get my attention. That doesn't sound much better than being crazy to me," Ranma admitted.  
"Well, as long as she has no leverage over your free will, I'm not worried about much other than your general health," Asuka admitted, rubbing her chin. "I don't really have any advice for dealing with her... although you can try killing her instead of just knocking her out."  
Ranma blinked. He hadn't been expecting that from Asuka. "Isn't that kind of... well... wrong?"  
"Why? This is a dead woman harrassing you while you sleep to complete some secret agenda of her own. Not only has she invaded your mind, but also your privacy, if she's appearing during the course of your dreams. As if that wasn't enough, her actions are beginning to affect your waking hours when you happen to have a very dangerous job that requires your full concentration and ability," by the end of her explanation, Asuka was scowling. "If the bitch wasn't already a ghost, I'd kill her myself. I can't afford to lose you to ancient spirits or fatigue, Saotome."  
The pigtailed cop couldn't help but blush slightly; it was rare for Asuka to give any indication that she considered her subordinates more than a good reason for alcohol and other mind-altering substances, and though he'd be hesitant to admit it, he highly valued the woman's praise.  
Not that he really thought he got enough of it, all things considered. But he respected Asuka enough that it meant something to him.  
"Well... she seems nice enough to me," Ranma admitted.  
Asuka decided not to remind the martial artist that he had already assaulted the specter repeatedly. "Nice or not, you shouldn't do what she says, so we should get rid of her if we can. In the meantime, I'm cutting your hours. I want you to get some extra sleep and see if it can compensate for this. We should probably elimate our practice time, since those have the least impact on our operations."  
Ranma sighed. "Right, right. Anything else?"  
"Actually, yes. I'll let you have the rest of the day off to start getting some extra sleep," Asuka said, rubbing her chin again. "But first, you're going to replace the broom closet doors." Her eyes narrowed. "I was wondering what happened to those."

The pigtailed man winced and then nodded before he stood up to leave Asuka's office. 'Man, the girls are always getting me into trouble. I'm starting to miss Sakura.' He frowned as he remembered that Sakura got him into trouble too, usually of the more painful and deadly kind. 'Man, I miss her. It was annoying at times, but still, I kinda like taking care of cute, timid girls constantly in need of rescue. Not that there are many of those around HERE.'  
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_Achoo!_ Pain lanced through Hotaru's skull as a sudden sneeze startled her into consciousness.  
She started to raised a hand to her head and mumble about how much it hurt, when her body trembled in agony and she let her arm fall back down. Her whole damn BODY hurt. A lot.  
She whimpered slightly as she tried to relax herself, and then moaned as she felt some of the pain seep away from the hot water caressing her muscles.  
'Wait, hot water?'  
Hotaru blinked her eyes several times, but that didn't result in much besides tiny twinges of pain as her body protested the use of all non-essential muscles. Wherever she was, it was wet, it was warm, and it was dark. The water was relatively shallow, and only covered her body up to her breasts. On that point, she was currently laying on an incline with her head near the top, and could feel a strong current tugging her backward against the slope.  
She frowned as she felt the surface of the incline. Slightly grainy, but hard and smooth. Eroded rock.  
Laying still once again, she went back over the sequence of events that had brought her here.  
'I... I must have fallen into a cavern,' she deduced, trying her best not to panic and to think about her situation rationally. 'It makes sense that there's hot water here; this mountain has some hot springs inns. So...'  
She shivered despite the warmth of the water. 'What do I do now?'

An hour later, the purple-haired girl was steady rising to her feet, glancing about at the cavern interior she found herself in.  
With an hour to adjust to the lack of light, Hotaru's view of the cave had gone from pitch black to pitch black with some water in it. Apparenly there was light coming from **somewhere** in the cavern, because the turbulent waters below had tiny, gleaming slivers of illumination from the wildly refracted light rays that barely allowed her to determine where the water ended and everything else began.  
She shuddered as she stood up, feeling several kinks in her back and a number of points in her body that were all but throbbing masses of agony. She didn't know the full extent of her injuries, since it was clear she had lost a lot of blood and her Senshi healing powers were having her drift in and out of shock, but she was weak, her head felt disturbingly light, and her left arm wasn't moving the way it was supposed to.

'I guess this is one of those times it pays to be a magical girl,' she thought to herself, pulling her henshin rod out of stuff-space and holding it up with her right hand.  
One long and flashy transformation sequence later, Sailor Saturn was wobbling unsteadily in the rushing water, her left eye twitching as she tried to get the weird circles and lines that had been burned into her vision to fade. As with her mountaineering experience, Hotaru didn't do much spelunking either, or she might have known that following a long adjustment to darkness with a quick exposure to high light wouldn't have given her a good view of the cave instead of, say, temporarily blinding her.  
Still, with her transformation complete, she could already feel the pain lessen from "mind-numbing" to "Damn it, why do I always have to take point," due to several sensory inhibitors installed in her Senshi form. After all, the Moon Kingdom's finest couldn't be allowed to take naps due to a little headache every now and then when fighting evil, and such conditions had been carefully accounted for.  
The fact that the Senshi 'armor' protected less of her body than any of the outfits she normally wore was an oddity that she would be forever putting aside for another day; it just never seemed like the right time to question the twisted priorities of the Senshis' creators any time those priorities became relevant.  
Using her glaive as a support, Saturn straightened out her back, wincing at the cracking noises that resulted. Then she gently tested her left arm, and found that whatever was wrong with it before seemed to have been corrected, for the most part.  
Having faith that whatever her injuries were, her transformation would fix them without complication in time, Sailor Saturn started poking her surroundings with her polearm to try and figure out a way to the surface.  
She felt a deep chill pass through her back, and chalked it up to being out of the warm water... although really, the stuffy air within the cavern was nearly as warm due to the underground springs.  
'Hmmm... Okay, I can hear some sort of waterfall nearby... so is it running further downward or am I hearing the current that brought me here?'  
She inadvertently found her answer as she jabbed the ground a little too hard with the Silence Glaive, trying to ascertain how far the rock extended out from her pool of water.  
Apparently it wasn't far enough, as her glaive found no rock to strike as Saturn drove it downward.  
Stupid rock.  
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" _Thwack! SPLOOSH!_  
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"Put me down this instant! You don't know what you're doing!" Serenity screamed, struggling against the ropes that bound her.  
Ranma ignored the noisy woman, and continued to carry her over his shoulder as he approached a long brick wall that stood out in the middle of the snow-covered streets. There was a single metal pole sticking up in front of it, and the wall itself was covered with bullet-holes.  
"Please! You've got to listen to me! The fate of the future as we know it is at stake!"  
Ranma stopped, and then rubbed his chin as he considered this. "The 'future as we know it'? What future is that?"  
"The one where a scarce fraction of the Earth's population survives to establish an eternal empire of everlasting peace and harmony!" The blonde spirit said desperately.  
"Pass." With that, Ranma shifted the woman slightly so that she couldn't gain as much leverage to thrash about, and continued walking toward the ominous stretch of wall.  
"You can't pass! It's your destiny!" The woman insisted, struggling with even less success than before.  
"If it's already fated to happen, then why do you have to come bug me about it while I'm trying to sleep?" Ranma asked, scratching his head.  
"So that the other things that are equally fated to happen don't happen instead!"  
Ranma was not amused as he dropped the woman down in front of the post. "That makes very little sense."  
Serenity sighed in frustration. "It makes perfect sense if you've studied inverse temporal mechanics. Or even third-stage mana field theory, if you can work through the technobabble. It was a standard class for all nobles and imperial officers during the Silver Millennium."  
Ranma's left eye twitched. "Lady, you're making it REAL easy to decide between listening to you and killing you off."  
"You don't understand," the queen growled. "If you don't accept your destiny, the future may not come to pass!"  
"Now that's just silly," Ranma said condescendingly, moving behind the woman as he tied her bonds to the post. "I may not know about temporal or mana... whatevers, but I'm pretty sure the future will definitely come to pass."  
"That's not what I meant!" Serenity shouted, her patience snapping.  
"Whatever. Crazy dead chick," Ranma mumbled, tightening the knot and then walking away from the wall as he waved to something far away in the haze of fog that seemed to obscure most of the city.

The ponytailed blonde struggled unsuccessfully against her bonds, noting ruefully that Ranma had such control over the dreamscape that he had unconsciously solidified her spiritual presence and forced it to obey the physical laws he had set in place. "If you would just hear me out, then..." she stopped talking as half a dozen soldiers walked up to her through the fog... or at least, she was guessing they were soldiers. Several things about them made the prospect doubtful.  
For one thing, they were all curvy, voluptuous women. Even for a queen who held a special elite guard consisting of magical female super-soldiers, this was fairly odd. For another thing, rather than fatigues or any kind of full-body uniform, they all wore form-fitting leotards with green camouflage patterns over them, along with simple boots.  
Again, considering the outfits she forced her aforementioned warriors to wear, it wasn't unbelievable, but entirely noteworthy.  
However, the women all moved in a standard military block formation, and they were all armed with M-16 assault rifles, so Serenity pushed aside any concerns about who they were for the more important matter of why they were here.  
Ranma shook his head as one of the girls marched up to him and handed him a small silver case.  
He hadn't noticed until recently, when he started remembering his dreams perfectly, but for some reason his nighttime fantasies involved far less heroic fighting and far more relaxing with unusually attractive women than he would've thought. He really couldn't imagine why this might be. It wasn't like he was some kind of sick pervert who liked being surrounded by gorgeous, affectionate girls, after all.  
Ah, the wonders of a viciously suppressed libido. Sadly, Junko never did stop trying to get into his pants long enough to really listen to any of those particular stories about his adolescent years.  
Stepping up to the bound woman, Ranma opened the silver case and removed a cigarette. "Here ya go. Your last smoke."  
Serenity stared at the paper cylinder in disgust. "I don't smoke."  
"I don't really see what that has to do with anything," he said, poking the cigarette into her lips and holding it as he lit the end with a spark of ki, "this is how they always do it in the movies."  
"The lives of the Senshi are at stake, here," the spirit insisted around the cigarette. "Without your help, Crystal Tokyo may never come to be!"  
"I'll keep that in mind," Ranma replied lazily, turning his head away to keep from inhaling the tobacco smoke.  
"You're not even listening!" Serenity shouted angrily. She would have spit out the lit cigarette in the process of her yelling, but Ranma was holding it firmly. "You have no idea what's _Cough!_ at stake _Cough!_ here! It's _Cough! Hack!_"  
Ranma nodded as she finally tore her head away and began coughing her lungs out. "Well, she's done smoking. Aim!" He walked away as the squadron of women soldiers raised their rifles.  
"Wait! _Cough!_ Usagi's counting on you! _Hack!_" Serenity grimaced; she had been hoping not to have to reveal too many details and expose the full extent of her knowledge. Not that it would affect anything either way, but as a spirit, she was supposed to be aloof and mysterious.  
Ranma had his hand up in the air, ready to release the signal that would result in the queen's demise. "Huh? Usagi? I thought you said this was about the Sailor Senshi."  
'Oh, what the hell. He's going to find out soon anyway.' "Usagi is Sailor Moon. If you help her, then you can help Usagi!"  
Ranma blinked, his arm still held in the air. Helping Usagi sounded fine to him, despite Asuka's reservations about following commands from the deceased. In fact, he had been planning on doing that anyway, seeing how the girl's recent introduction to wonderful world of cybernetic enhancement probably meant she was entangled with high-tech terrorist schemes. "Sure, no problem." Then he lowered his arm. "FIRE!"  
"WAIT! THAT'S NOT ALL I-" _Blam! Blam! Ratta-tatta-tatta-tat!_

Ranma turned away from the brutal scene behind him, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as the apparent leader of the all-female firing squad approached him.  
"If Usagi is Sailor Moon... and the Freedom's Angels turned Usagi into a cyborg... then that means..."  
His eyes widened, and the woman at his side grew concerned. "What does it mean, Commander?"  
"I have no idea," Ranma admitted, shrugging. "I didn't even know who Sailor Moon was, though I guess she must be one of these Senshi chicks that Asuka was telling me about."  
Behind him, the various female soldiers all finished reloading their weapons, and then turned and stood at attention.  
Ranma nodded to them and then gripped one hand into a fist. "All right, we're all done here. Now let's go out there and win this war!"  
The woman at his side blinked. "What war, Commander?"  
"Isn't there some kind of huge battle going on outside the city?" Ranma asked, frowning when the squad leader shook her head. "Then there must be some kind of rebellion in progress, right?" Again she shook her head. "A terrorist attack?" Another shake. "A random mugging?"  
The scantily clad soldier turned around, looked left, and then looked right. Turning back to Ranma, she shrugged apologetically.  
"Well, then what the hell am I supposed to do until I wake up?" Ranma complained, looking quite upset that there would be no violence in the near future.  
"Ooh! I know! There's a mixed bath house still open down the street!" One of the soldiers said happily, causing the other gun-toting women to squeal girlishly in excitement.  
"YAY! Bath house party! Bath house party!"  
Ranma sighed in frustration, reluctantly accepting that he'd spend his night surrounded by naked girls instead of beating up strangers. 'What a gyp. I hope that stupid queen lady's gone for good, I wanna go back to my normal dreams.'  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Usagi carried Luna in her arms, humming a tune happily to herself, the moon cat silently (for once) reflected upon her charge.  
She could appreciate the fact that Usagi had recovered from her heartbreak and humiliation, she really could. After all, Luna gave her almost as little credit as Rei. She was pleasantly surprised to see the ponytailed girl rebound so completely, get over her issues - which were actually quite serious, for a change - and accept being a cyborg until they could find a way to reverse the process.  
But it was just too damn weird to see her enjoy it as well.  
"Usagi, we need to talk," Luna murmured as she checked the street around them. The sidewalks were pretty bare of people at this time in the afternoon, but extra caution never hurt.  
Usagi nodded her head.  
Luna was about to launch into her spiel, but a moment of hesitation allowed her to notice that Usagi was still nodding her head repeatedly, and without making eye contact with her.  
Frowning, Luna extended her claws and raked Usagi's arm a bit.  
There was no response, as the cat's feeble claws failed to cut Usagi's polymer dermal armor to aggravate the pain nerves below.

Usagi felt Luna rub up against her arm as she walked along the street, and started to pet her as she continued to hum the same annoying tune she had been humming ever since she left her dorm room.

Luna growled and suddenly jumped onto Usagi's face, forgoing any further measures of subtlety as the girl shouted in surprise and pried her talking pet off of her. "Ack! Stop it! Okay, hold on already!"  
Inserting her finger into her ear, Usagi twisted it clockwise, causing the tiny satellite dish sticking out of her left hair bun to fold itself flat and then vanish into the odango.  
A few of the pedestrians that had noticed the girl being attacked by her cat shook their head at the weird direction technology was taking nowadays, what with portable devices so small they couldn't even make it out from a distance, yet still needed bulky antennaes and receivers to function.  
"What's wrong?" Usagi asked, mildly annoyed that her song was interrupted.  
Luna bristled as her charge held her by the scruff of her neck, as the position made it very difficult to look properly authoritative. "Usagi, it's not that I'm not happy you've taken this utter calamity so well, but... uh..." she frowned. "You're taking it... too well, really," she mumbled quietly.  
"Huh? What does that mean?" The blonde cyborg asked, putting Luna back in her previous position so that it wouldn't look like she were having a conversation with her cat to the few other people on the streets.  
"Well, for ONE THING, you are entirely too comfortable with it already," Luna hissed. "Don't you think walking around with a dish on your head might raise suspicions?"  
Usagi blinked. "Walking around with a WHAT on my head?" She had no idea what her body did in order to process and grant her requests - Ami's explanations weren't much help - all she knew was that when she thought it would be nice to listen to some music, music started playing.  
"This is exactly what I'm talking about! You're losing focus!" Luna snapped. "Have you and the others made any progress on finding a way to reverse this?"  
Usagi shrugged helplessly. "What can we do? Rei-chan can't find any hint to where these Angel people might be now, and every time Ami-chan suggests we ask her cousin, everyone else freaks out." This wasn't entirely true, as Minako had started wavering on the issue, and her vote would have made the majority pro-DAPC, but none of the Inner Senshi were willing to humor the girl's creepy infatuation with that American cop.  
"Still, I don't think you're giving this situation the concern it deserves!" The black moon cat chided.  
Usagi sighed. It was annoying when Luna was like this, criticizing her behavior without providing any constructive support. "Well, then what should I do? Cry about it?"  
Luna desperately resisted the sarcastic urges that followed that statement, lest her charge do as suggested and break down into a state of bawling. The advisor had worked so hard and for so long, after all, and she'd never forgive herself if she ruined everything right when it appeared that Usagi was making some progress against her whiny nature.  
"Well... YOU don't have any problem with that DCPS or whatever, right?" Luna asked carefully, nodding when Usagi shook her head. "Then go down there yourself and find out where the terrorists are."  
"Without the others?" The ponytailed girl asked. "Rei really doesn't want to get involved with those people."  
Luna forwent biting Usagi for her stupidity, since it seemed like Usagi was now tough enough to suffer such minor discomfort without noticing.  
"You're the leader! And the one who has a stake in this mission besides! You don't need the others' permission!" The moon cat snapped.  
Usagi stopped and scratched her head as she considered that.  
This freaked Luna out quite a bit, since both her arms were currently helping support the feline advisor.  
"Hey, yeah! You're right!" Usagi said cheerfully as the mechanical servo arm used to scratch her head contemplatively retracted itself and settled back alongside her shoulderblade.  
Pedestrians who had frozen in place at the sight of a schoolgirl with a robot arm coming out of her back shook their heads to dispel the strange and sudden hallucination, and were rewarded by the sight of that same girl possessing only two arms, both of them very human in appearance. They moved on in a hurry, eager to get out of the area while things remained theoretically normal.  
"Stop that! Stop it with the gadgets!" Luna hissed as Usagi began to walk faster.  
"What are you talking about?" Usagi said, obviously annoyed. "I'm not using any gadgets. Now hush, I'm trying to think." Idly flicking her wrist and popping a Pez into her mouth, Usagi continued to walk down the street, not noticing as the few other pedestrians on her side of the street quickly crossed to the other side in order to give her a suitable berth.

'Hmmm... okay... the problem is, I don't know where the DAPC station is,' Usagi decided in her head. Sure, she had been there before, but on the way there she had been transported in the rear of a police vehicle, and on the way out she had been led through the streets by Sailor Pluto.  
'Wait, Ami-chan went there a last week! I can-' her train of thought hit a penny and tumbled over the side of the rails as the bright green text she was becoming so familiar with scrolled across her field of vision.  
Scanning mode engaged. Search query engaged. Accessing local databanks...  
The blonde cyborg blinked in surprise, and then grinned as she realized that yet again her new gadgets were proving more useful than they were problematic.  
Luna stared in horror before whipping her head around at the few other people wandering the streets, seeing them all hurry away while trying very hard not to look at the girl who had just sprouted metal fins atop her head.  
Whimpering slightly, the moon cat turned back toward her charge, staring at the elongated silver and blue-edged oval fins that stuck almost straight out of Usagi's head with a slight backwards tilt.  
'Bunny ears. She has robot bunny ears,' Luna thought to herself as her face darkened. 'Why? Why me? I try so hard, and do so much, and yet this crap always happens to my Senshi. It's not fair.' She decided then and there that she was going to have a serious talk to Artemis about trading girls; Minako had gone from a super-hormonal ditz to a respectable warrior of love and justice (though Luna admitted that she hadn't lost the hormones or the foolishness) so easily, and without the childish tantrums, to say nothing of the abductions of her male interests and recently herself. It just wasn't fair, and damn it, it was time her male counterpart had to put up with this sort of thing.  
Usagi, who was totally unaware that her appearance had taken a step closer to her namesake, watched patiently as various text indicators floated before her eyes.  
Resources located... contacting http server...  
Information databank identified: Internet. Altering primary and secondary resource protocols to facilitate live data stream.  
"I have wireless internet?" Usagi mumbled, causing Luna to wince again. "Coooool..."  
Polling local databank archives. Search query DAPC.  
Usagi frowned as she finally moved off the street to sit down on a bench next to the sidewalk, having noticed that she was just standing still out in the open as she stared off into space. 'Probably best to use the full name... what was it?'  
Search query expanded Department of Abominable... -error- Albino -error- Abnormal Phe... -error- Phenomenal -error- Pheremone -not even close- Phenol -error- Phenomenae Containment.  
Usagi sighed as she finally got it right, and awaited results.  
Please select relevant data links: Property claims against DAPC. Public damage caused by DAPC. DAPC implicated in murder of Senator's son. DAPC claims Senator's son will not be missed. DAPC proven right; Sgt. Yujikata forgotten within twenty-four-hour period. DAPC tactical analysis. DAPC staff and history. DAPC claims responsibility for sentient glue-based life-form. DAPC operations...  
Quickly getting tired of seeing random articles concerning her search topic, she squinted her eyes shut in concentration as she focused on the DAPC building in particular.  
Her cortex implants quickly picked up her request and narrowed the search.  
DAPC headquarters facility located. Triangulating ground-level urban trajectory... complete. Proceed west 0.4 kilometers and turn left.

"Which way is west?" Usagi said suddenly as she opened her eyes and stood up, startling the nerve-wracked feline in her arms.  
It didn't help Luna any when she saw her charge nod immediately after asking the question, and then turn in the proper direction before proceeding at a fast walk.  
"Usagi," Luna said shakily, truly afraid at this point that the ponytailed girl was beyond the point at which she could help, "please do something about your ears."  
Seeing the girl tug on her earlobes uncertainly only darkened Luna's spirits further; indeed, Usagi was way too comfortable and way too ignorant of her new cybernetic body.  
"What's wrong with my ears?" The blonde cyborg asked, frowning. "Robot voice in my head, do you know what she's talking about?"  
This was quite enough for Luna, who twisted out of Usagi's arms and leapt onto the sidewalk, causing the blonde to stumble to a halt in surprise, and then fall over as a result, proving that even the most technologically advanced tools and regulators of the period couldn't save Usagi's sense of balance.  
While Luna found it familiar and oddly comforting to see the cybernetic girl fall flat on her face and moan pitifully, it wasn't nearly enough to encourage her to continue subjecting her mind to this new madness. "The hell with this, you don't need ME to go with you. I'm getting out of here," she mumbled as she took off down the sidewalk at full kitty speed, eventually jumping atop a fence and dashing out of sight.  
"Luna! Hey! You meanie!" Usagi shouted, feeling quite miffed that she was left all alone again, and wondering what had prompted the feline's departure.  
Rubbing her head, the blonde cyborg started to pick herself up off the ground.  
_Thud!_ She fell over again from the surprise as her hand hit something that definitely didn't belong there, and as she shifted into a sitting position, she slowly pieced together what Luna was talking about.  
"Oops. I guess she was talking about these. I wonder why she called them ears, though?" Without being able to see them, she really couldn't fathom the idea, given that they weren't shaped anything like her ears.  
She gave a quick look around, blushing as she realized that there were still a few other people around. Those people inevitably gave her strange looks when they walked across the opposite sidewalk, and seemed to be avoiding her side of the street.

'I should probably get rid of these-' Usagi thought to herself when the text reappeared, this time a glaring red instead of a soft green.  
Warning! Chronometric particle burst detected! Phasic teleport in progress!  
Usagi blinked, totally confused by the explanation. "Huh? What does that mean?" Her assistant text quickly returned in its former color.  
Searching databanks... "Chronometric particle," a unique phasic energy spark created by rapid revolutions of tachyon particles within a high-energy accelerator. First discovered by professor Albert Einstein in his lesser-known experiments with phase theory.  
"Well, that's just great. Now I've gone from confused to migraine," Usagi mumbled bitterly.  
These particles are not naturally occurring, and indicative of activation of a chronosphere device.  
Usagi sighed. "Okay, I'll bite. What's a 'chronosphere'?" At this point people were actually turning around and going back where they came from in their efforts to avoid the obviously crazy girl with the metal bunny ears on her head.  
The chronosphere is a temporal agitator that functions as a teleportation device. First designed by Albert Einstein, the device's schematics were perfected and the device constructed by General Igov Yutchzky and Professor Yoshi Konta.  
"Okay..." Usagi mumbled irritably as she massaged her head. "So basically what you're saying... is that somebody teleported somewhere. Using some machine. Rather than, say, magical powers."  
Scanning for fluctuations in local mana wavelengths... negative. Running full-range local scan over chronometric dispersion area...  
As Usagi's metal sensor fins began to twitch, the man whose shop she had been kneeling in front of for a good three minutes decided that discretion was the better part of economics and flipped over the "Open" sign on his window before he began closing the blinds.  
Scans complete. Tight-beam emission sensors and several Friend-or-Foe detection keys indicate the presence of self-motivated artificial combatants. Heat scans indicate heavy weapons usage. Awaiting target registration.  
"RRRRRRGH!" Usagi suddenly gripped the sides of her head in frustration as the wordy explanations flew right over her head. "Can't you speak normal Japanese!" She growled out.  
There was a long pause as a long sequence of green dots scrolled across her field of vision.  
Robots detected. They are opening fire. Friend/Foe?  
Usagi blinked in surprise, and then frowned deeply as she thought about what she had found out. 'Minako said that they fought a bunch of robots in that junk yard where they found me... could it be the same people? If so, then we have to find them!'  
Out loud, and still forgetting that she could issue these types of commands in her head, she said, "Let's say they're foe, for now. Where are they?"  
Scans indicate that enemy units are gathering around the Tokyo Center for Technology and the Arts. Scans also indicate that the center is under attack. Local forces are mobilizing a counter-attack. Estimated time until those forces arrive is twenty-two minutes.  
Without wasting any more time, Usagi pulled her communicator out of her purse and flipped it open (Luna had possessed the foresight to pack it, since it appeared the Senshi would be seeing more action).  
'I'm glad I didn't get very far from the dorms. We've got to hurry!'  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Gurgle! Gulp!_ Groaning miserably, Sailor Pluto downed her eighth Aspirin in as many minutes as another of the myserious time-headaches struck her like a mining pick.  
The guardian of time seriously considered going back to a period in which the morons who designed the Senshi transformation templates were alive such that she could give the bastards a piece of her mind; while her Senshi powers granted her incredible healing ability and pain reduction, it only helped with entirely physical wounds. In the case of her current agony, common medicine was actually the best bet.  
Unfortunately, as Aspirin was a foreign chemical that had an unnatural effect upon her body, her Senshi healing powers thought it would be a great idea to flush the medicine out of her body as soon as possible, as well as "correcting" said unnatural effects posthaste.  
Another spike of temporal-based agony brought the Senshi of Pluto stumbling onto the floor, and sent the bottle of pills onto the floor, spilling its precious and desperately needed contents onto the gleaming tiles of Pluto's personal bathroom.  
"Forget yelling at them," Pluto mumbled in a miserable daze, "if I ever get my hands on those bastards, I'll break their damn legs."  
Dragging herself back up to her feet, Pluto walked back to the Gates of Time to continue searching for the damnable cause of her twinges of agony that she just couldn't pinpoint. She just couldn't take it anymore! She had to find the cause, no matter how hard and how long she had to look! Even if it took her until the birth of Crystal f---ing Tokyo itself!  
After all, in regards to the Senshis' fate and the establishment of Crystal Tokyo, all the major battles were over, and the important issues had been resolved. It wasn't like there was anything going on with any of the Senshi that she needed to know about or take care of.  
Of course not. Really, at this point, what's the worst kind of trouble they could get into?  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Far away in a cavern nobody knew about, Sailor Saturn groaned in her sleep, the giant lump on her head from having brained herself during her fall having finally receded.  
Turning over, she started to snore.  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Okay, we're all here!" Sailor Mars announced as she and the four other Inners leapt down into the alley where Usagi was waiting for them.  
They all immediately stopped and stared.  
Usagi nodded in determination, wondering why the others were looking at her like she had grown a pair of horns, and completely forgetting that she had sprouted a pair of sensor fins. "Okay! We have to hurry; the police and Core will be there in about seventeen minutes!"  
Sailor Mercury shook her head, wondering off-hand if maybe the Senshi tranformation didn't do as good a job in sobering her up as she had earlier theorized. "Uh... okay, but... how do you know?"  
The blonde cyborg suddenly frowned. "I was hoping you could help me figure that out."  
Sailor Jupiter was the second fastest to shake off her leader's new peripherals, though she had to viciously crush her urge to laugh. "Hurry up and transform! If we catch them off-guard, maybe we can capture their leader and squeeze him for information!"  
Usagi nodded seriously, raising her brooch in the air. "Moon Eternal power, make up!"  
"..." There was a certain amount of dread and tension in the air as Usagi continued to hold up her transformation item in the air above her... to absolutely no effect.  
"This is very, very bad, isn't it?" Sailor Venus asked nervously.  
Just as everyone was about to round on Mercury and start bombarding the team's new alcoholic with unanswerable questions, Usagi let out a sudden squeak, keeping their attention on her for another moment.  
Combat mode initialized. Tactical level Alpha engaged.  
_FSSSSSSHOOOOOOOM!_ A glowing circle of light flickered into existence over Usagi's head, and then slowly moved downward around her body as it rotated. Strange, precise patterns of energy weaved through the air around her as the circle swept over the cyborg's skin, and once it had dropped below her neck, the point at which the circle bisected her body flared brilliantly, leaving behind a dull black bodysuit in leiu of the girl's street clothes.  
After approximately fifteen seconds, the circle of light reached the bottom of Usagi's feet, and flickered out of existence.  
The others gaped, though their surprise stemmed far more from the fact that Usagi's transformation was different than from the transformation itself.  
Usagi was now dressed in a slight variation from the simple bodysuit she was in when she awoke in Konta's lab; it looked very much like a diving wetsuit, except that there was no zipper and that there were small, angular plastic pads over her shoulders and elbows. The only other clothes she wore was a pair of jet black boots without laces and some fingerless gloves with padded knuckles.  
"Uhm... wow... doesn't quite feel the same..." Usagi mumbled abashedly as she rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment.  
Sailor Venus was the first to regain speech, and she scowled. "No fair! Her costume's sexier than ours!"  
_Crash!_ Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury all tasted asphalt, which didn't seem nearly as bad after their last Senshi endeavor in the junk yard.  
Usagi looked down and considered Venus' statement. "You really think so? This one doesn't show off my legs, though."  
Sailor Venus just fumed silently. It had been a silent gripe for a while, but ever since she had passed her sixteenth birthday, she had really thought much less of the questionable Senshi attire, which was notable not only for the short skirt, but the incredibly girly ribbons and bows, the sparkling gems, and the long, knee-high boots. Which was fine and (kind of) appropriate when she was an adolescent, but as she got older and her body matured, she had wished for an outfit that was sexy rather than cute, and frankly, Usagi's new battle suit had the curve-hugging thing in spades, while retaining an unmistakable simplicity that made her look more like a superheroine and less like jailbait.  
Of course, there WAS a significant sector of their fan base who found their outfits to have plenty of sex appeal, but then, those people were all disgusting pedophiles who deserve a Love Me Chain across the neck.  
You know who you are.  
"Uh... now really isn't the time to be concerned with that," Mercury began uncertainly, before Mars cut her off.  
"Yeah, who cares what's sexier? How come she gets combat boots when the rest of us have to fight evil in heels?" The raven-haired Senshi complained, divulging her own beef with the traditional Senshi dress code.  
"I believe Mercury was referring to the fact that, apparently, we're on a time limit here?" Jupiter said pointedly.

Reluctantly, the Senshi of Venus and Mars nodded and sprinted with the others toward their destination, although the two continued casting jealous glares at their leader.  
"Say, Jupiter?" Mercury said hesitantly, putting on some extra steam as she leapt up to the rooftops alongside the Thunder Senshi. "Did we ever decide on that thing? You know, about how we handle it if humans start shooting at us?"  
Sailor Jupiter frowned, then grimaced. "Nope. We sure didn't."  
"Huh. We really should have," Mercury said noncommitally, which sure as hell didn't describe her feelings on the matter. "This is going to end badly, huh?"  
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it will," Jupiter admitted. "Of course, it's just as likely to be from Sailor Moon screwing up her new abilities than from us getting shot."  
The genius Senshi sighed. Some days it just didn't pay to sober up.  
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The head researcher at the Tokyo Center for Technology and the Arts had been in very high spirits when he had come into work that morning.  
And why not? As it had turned out, a few days previous some of his workers had been given permission to peruse some scrap heap around a Freedom's Angels military lab, and search the massive piles of garbage for anything interesting.  
Naturally, they had jumped at the chance to root around in trash to find FA equipment; the terrorist scourge that plagued Japan had access to unbelievable technologies, most of which was hoarded by Core's own private military research division before any of it could be analyzed by "lesser" organizations. Even in the case of the military lab, the lab itself was completely ransacked by the military scientists, and they had probably only let the Tokyo Center's men in on the remains because they didn't feel like digging through the scrap.  
Despite this, they had found numerous amazing pieces of combat technology in that scrap heap, many of them only partially obliterated. While some of the robots and androids they found were obviously disabled during the course of the battle that took place there, others appeared to have been decommissioned for other reasons, and sent to the scrap heap more or less intact.  
The real find, however, the GEM that had made his entire career of being stepped over and disregarded worth it - up until this very moment, at least - was finding an entirely new type of robotic defense drone that had been, against all odds considering those involved, almost entirely undamaged.  
He could still remember the feeling of elation when he saw the device, which appeared to be some sort of tentacle-armed defense drone with a baffling number of energy weapons.  
He could remember a much stronger feeling of dread and foreboding when the terrorist general arrived, who appeared to be some sort of Russian cyborg with a an electric claw for a hand. Then again, that had been two minutes ago.

_Shwak!_ A fan of blood sprayed over a nearby display case as Igov slashed the last of the security guards across the chest, sending the man flying into the side before he hit the wall and crumpled to the floor.  
The general snorted, feeling some small regret at killing the foolish men. They weren't even armed; that last one had actually tried to spray Igov in the face with pepper spray.  
"There is reason why most devices of this nature brought to military complex," the cyborg mumbled conversationally as he stomped toward the researchers huddled together at the end of the hall, his heavy footfalls echoing loudly and making his presence even more intimidating.  
The head researcher trembled as he stepped forward slightly. "Y-Yes... it was, well, actually a bit of a fluke. I'm sure it would have been taken to Core's special facilities h-had they known about it..." he trailed off with a whimper as the Russian reached him, stopping just a foot away as he glared down through the blood-red lens of his sensor eye. "Uhm... so, do you need any help carrying it out, or...?"  
Igov snorted, causing the scientist to flinch back. "No. Igov come prepared," he said firmly in his slightly broken Japanese, gesturing forward with his hand.  
Back near the entrance of the building, a small squad of hulking cyborgs stepped forward at the command, heading toward the back of the room with their rifles mounted on their hips. Behind them, a single muscular, tattooed man with goggles and a machine gun stepped up beside the Russian.  
"What're we gonna do about these scum?" The terrorist asked while grinning, his weapon at the ready.  
Igov frowned. "We do nothing. To kill these people is waste of ammunition." He idly removed an oily cloth from the pocket of his trench coat, and began to wipe the blood off of the Tesla claw on his right arm. "We take defense droid and go. Defensive perimeter will not hold long once the authorities arrive. Igov does not intend be here when they do."  
He turned toward the researchers, who were just trying to look unobtrusive and harmless now that they knew they would not be harmed. "Know that Angel of Freedom know mercy, and know compassion, friends!"  
With a grim smile, he whipped a cigarette out of his pocket and poked it in-between his lips. "Is simply not our strong point."  
_Bzrt!_ Lighting the end of the cigarette with a strand of electricity, Igov turned on his heel and walked back toward the entrance, moving only slightly to avoid the scattered corpses of the security guards and the puddles of spilled blood.  
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Igov blew out a thick plume of smoke as he exited the building, and immediately began scanning the communication channels.  
"Hmmm... Core will arrive in ten minute," the Russian mumbled, watching as his cyborg soldiers formed a loose perimeter around the building entrance, while they were a bit more clustered next to the eighteen-wheeler that had parked on the center's front steps and was awaiting its cargo. "Very fortunate droid not taken to Core facility; this has been good day for Igov."  
The terrorist at his side nodded as kept careful watch over the streets. There were no pedestrians about, as they had opened fire on the surrounding area immediately after disembarking, and caused enough damage right away to get their point across. Smoldering wreckage that had once been cars littered the streets around the center, pouring streams of smoke into the air and warning from a considerable distance that those who wished to live should mind their own business and turn away.  
"And what about the DAPC?" The man asked, suddenly sounding far more subdued.  
Igov shook his head. "They have not been contacted. Is unlikely they will be. Lightning strike on government building is not jurisdiction of DA officers. All goes according to plan."  
Of course, he should have known better than to utter that last sentence. For if there was one thing that the universe despised more than a vaccuum, it was a simple, effective plan that seemed to be working flawlessly.

"Hold it right there!" Usagi yelled as she pointed at the two men near the building's entrance from the roof of the storage facility opposite.  
Immediately the terrorist and various cyborgs all looked up to stare at her, and she continued with her usual evil-fighting routine.  
"Laboratories are places for inventing the material conveniences of tomorrow! For your heartless attack upon these helpless scientists, you will not be forgiven! I am the pretty soldier Sailor Moon, and in the name of the moon, I will punish you!"  
As the other four Senshi began to name themselves, the man standing next to Igov scratched his head. "Is that really Sailor Moon? Doesn't look like her outfit... doesn't even match the others... and... when'd she get rabbit ears?" That wasn't the only thing wrong with the current scenario, either. For one thing, it was extremely rare, especially in recent times, for the Sailor Senshi to attack human criminals rather than be seen fighting inhuman monsters (he conveniently forgot that the bulk of his attack force was in fact reanimated cyborgs). For another thing, the second blonde who actually was wearing the traditional seifuku wasn't moving along with her part of their introduction, instead holding a large sign above her head mentioning advertising space.

Igov didn't really know what his subordinate was mumbling about; he had not heard of Sailor Moon, nor was he aware that parts of Tokyo were subject to patrol by demon hunters.  
Whatever else he thought of the strange women yelling at him from high above, he thought it was very nice of them to announce their presence to him and then remain absolutely still atop an area with absolutely no cover while talking instead of attacking or taking up some sort of tactical position. It was a nice change from his usual enemies, who had the irritating tendency to appear before him with guns already blazing, loved to hide so that they wouldn't get shot, and sometimes didn't announce their presence at all until they had already placed explosives in key areas.  
That really sucked. Those bombs hurt.  
Igov decided that he could definitely get used to fighting these kinds of battles as he finished triangulating the ballistic arc of his artillery units and sent the necessary commands. It was rare he ever faced people that valued style over strategy. Of course, that was because those people rarely lived long.  
He sighed somewhat regretfully as the Senshis' speeches wound down. He was going to miss these girls.

Usagi frowned impatiently as she waited for Sailor Venus to say her part, and then spared a glance at the other blonde Senshi.  
She blinked in surprise once she saw the sign. 'Oh. Minako's STILL looking for a sponsor? Oh well.'  
Turning back to the matter at hand, she was about to begin her attack sequence, when suddenly a large, bright red exclamation mark flashed repeatedly on the right side of her field of vision.  
'Huh? I wonder what that's all about... and what's that whistling noise?'  
_KRA-KROOOOM! BOOM! KABOOM!_  
The Senshi screamed in surprise as the building they were standing on suddenly burst outward, billowing jets of flame and hurling chunks of fiery debris outward onto the street as a result of the sudden barrage it was subjected to.  
This was very bad news for the demon hunters perched on top of the building, who didn't have any time to jump clear before the floor underneath them shattered and buckled.

The terrorist backed away and waved a hand in front of his face as a wave of dust and debris billowed out from the trembling wreckage that used to be the east storage facility. "Man... that was pretty easy." He was slightly disppointed at the prospect; he had been quite a bit of a Sailor Senshi fan back when he had dropped out of college, though he certainly hadn't been nearly so big on the "justice" thing.  
Igov's artificial eye flared brightly. "They are still alive. And Igov suspect they still fight, as well." He turned toward the non-cyborg. "Seven minutes left before reinforcements come. Take droid and escape with truck. Igov will take care of this."  
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"Owwww..." Usagi whined as pushed away a huge section of concrete that was pinning her legs down, causing the massive chunk of rubbled to bounce up on one edge, and then slowly tip away from her.  
"AAUGH!" _Crash!_  
Usagi blanched. "Oops! Sorry Mercury!"  
Sailor Mars groaned as she got up unsteadily, digging her legs out of the rubble that had partially buried her. "Maybe we should be more careful about letting the enemy get the first shot..."  
As Usagi watched Jupiter attempt to pull Mercury free from under the slate of concrete that had been dropped on her, the familiar green text appeared, supplying her damage report.  
Trauma classification: medium-level concussive damage incurred. Minor structural damage indicated. Total systems down: 0. Kinetic dampeners functioning at 61. Total damage: negligible. All along her body, small gashes and tears in her combat suit glowed yellow and then shrank. Within seconds, her uniform was completely repaired.  
Usagi disregarded the damage report, being unable to understand most of it. Looking around, she felt certain that she should be coughing as she realized that a thick cloud of dust and ash was sitting over the wreckage of the building, obscuring the surroundings from view. The dust was settling quickly, however, and the blonde cyborg was wondering if perhaps they should be moving away before this area spontaneously combusted again.  
_BRZZAAAK!_ "EAAAYAAAH!" Mars suddenly screamed in pain a bolt of lightning struck her in the chest from beyond the dissipating wall of dust, curling around her form and sending the raven-haired Senshi to her knees.

"Mars! Are you okay?" Usagi grit her teeth as she tried to figure out where the energy bolt had come from, and felt her heart pound faster as she realized that their current situation had slipped completely out of their control.  
As she squinted to try and see better into the cloud, Usagi's vision suddenly went black, only to return a moment later.  
She blinked in surprise at this, and then whirled around in confusion as she figured out that her sense of sight had changed. Rather than seeing a map of colors and lights, instead she perceived the world around her as a splash of red blobs on a field of blue. Orienting on her friends, she saw rough, female-shaped red outlines of women picking up Rei's similarly shaped and colored outline, though that particular one had flares of white that seemed to be lashing around her as she twitched.  
'I... I have heat vision...' Usagi thought, looking around the area and noticing that most of the surroundings were almost indistinguishable blue blobs. 'This is SO COOL!'  
_BRZZAAAK!_ Unfortunately, she was distracted enough that she didn't remember the most immediate usage for her new trick until Ami was blasted away by a second lightning attack.  
"You monster!" Usagi shouted as she oriented on the large, man-shaped red splotch that was standing on the edge of the rubble she was standing on. "Take this! SPOON TWISTY... uh... wait..."  
Sailors Mars and Mercury would have slapped themselves in the forehead at hearing the exclamation and offered helpful/insulting rationale for the mistake, had they not been already reduced to spasming heaps.  
Usagi frowned as she stopped her usual attack/dance moves. Or at least, she thought it was her normal attack movement. She remembered it being the same, but then, she had never really had to do the move from memory before. It just sort of came to her. "Okay, okay, wait... that's all wrong, isn't it? It should be 'Moon something something,' right? All my attacks start with moon..."  
Venus and Jupiter were gaping in shock at the sight, too stunned to react even as the dust dissipated to the point where they could make out a tall, man-sized shadow through the dust.  
_BRZZAAAK!_ Igov didn't know what the girl in the wetsuit was yelling about, but decided it really didn't matter as he zapped the other blonde and sent her to the ground, twitching in pain.  
"It was 'Moon something Heart Attack'! Dang it! What was that other word?" Usagi asked, scratching her head.  
Sailor Jupiter couldn't believe it. 'She forgot her attack? We can forget our attacks? How? That doesn't even make sense!' Actually, upon further thought that would happen much later, it did make a degree of sense, but then, nobody among them knew how the hell their magic worked in the first place.

_BRZZAAAK!_ Igov was starting to get seriously bored by now. The only one of these girls who was reacting at all to his assault was the blonde one with the metal rabbit ears, and so far she had done nothing other than embarrass herself. The others seemed to be less scatter-brained, but the last two had remained firmly preoccupied by the ponytailed blonde's antics. He had no idea why they would freeze up like that in the middle of a battle zone, and it irritated him slightly.  
Sure, he may have been tired of getting his ass handed to him by martial artist cops and enraged zerglings, but blasting defenseless women was quite beneath him. That those seemingly defenseless women had confronted him in stupid-looking outfits and declared from the rooftops that they were going to punish him was a small comfort.  
It WAS a comfort, however small, but he was still going to be quite upset if these women didn't get their skirted asses in gear and throw a punch or two.

Sailor Jupiter grit her teeth and stumbled as the Tesla bolt slammed into her, lashing across her body and searing her skin with energy levels that would have killed normal humans.  
Strangely enough, that was all that happened, and the Thunder Senshi blinked in surprise as she found herself still able to move, rather than collapsing like the others.  
'Wait... Thunder Senshi! Duh! I probably have lightning resistance or something!' Which wasn't quite correct, but close enough. Due to the inevitable interference caused by one having high-energy electric fields exploding all around her, some adjustments had to be made to keep the Senshi of Jupiter from being paralyzed by her own attacks.  
"Don't think so, creep!" Jupiter growled, dashing forward toward the man in the billowing trench coat while charging her attack in her hand. "**Sparkling wide pressure**!"  
Igov smirked as he watched a ball of agitated electrical energies leave her hands, spiralling toward him. 'So, these fools can fight back.'  
Leaping backward with a height and distance that left Jupiter grudgingly impressed, Igov landed heavily on top of an overhang that sat over the Technology Center's entrance as her magic attack drilled into the ground, creating a thick, ashen trench through the street.  
Then Igov jump forward off the overhang at the same time he began to glow a bright, gleaming white.

Usagi blinked as her vision turned back to normal, and oriented to the relatively dust-free surroundings just in time to see Igov appear in a loud, brilliant cacophany of bright lights before slamming into the surprised Jupiter with all the momentum he had possessed before his teleportation.  
Warning! Chronometric tracers indicate that primary target has chronoshift abilities!  
Usagi scowled, not really knowing what that analysis meant or why she should care. She was getting quite frustrated now, as she was coming to suspect that somehow becoming a cyborg had cut her off from her Senshi abilities.  
"Oh, the heck with it! **Moon tiara action**!" She shouted, grabbing for the tiara around her head...  
... And getting only a fistful of her own hair. She scowled even further as Sailor Mars and Mercury finally rose to their feet to try and help Jupiter, who had been engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Igov and appeared to be losing.  
'Damn it! Why aren't my powers working?' She realized that if she didn't get some kind of attack off soon, the others were liable to forget about her entirely; the bad guy had already blasted every Senshi except her, and teleported right by her to get to Jupiter, so by now the ponytailed cyborg was beginning to feel the lack of (negative) attention. 'Hey! Computer in my head! Attack that guy already!'  
Cannot authorize command. AI is not permitted direct access to weapons systems.  
'What does that mean?'  
... I cannot shoot him. You'll have to do it.  
Usagi fumed, her eye twitching as Sailor Mercury went flying over her head to land in a mess of twisted pipes. 'How do I do that?'  
AI is not configured to provide tactical solutions.  
Feeling her hands clench, Usagi's subtle control over the situation snapped. "Just give me some sort of weapon, already!"

Hearing their leader shout out suddenly, the battered Senshi all stopped and once again directed their full attention to the ponytailed blonde, despite the fact that it was probably a bad thing to do right then.  
Luckily for them, Igov also stopped to see what the loud girl was doing now. This was especially lucky for Sailor Jupiter, whom the Russian had grasped by the midriff, and had been slamming repeatedly into the wall of the adjacent building when he froze.  
Along Usagi's forearms, her combat suit seemed to melt away as two large, thick gray bracers bulged outward.  
A moment later, the point of the bracers behind her wrists sparked brilliantly, heralding the emergence of two foot-long, triangle-shaped blue energy blades.  
Igov raised an eyebrow.  
Jupiter decided that this new development was more important than her own immediate peril, and finally voiced her own personal complaint with the Senshi tranformation. "Hey! How come she gets weapons and we don't?" It was something she wondered and secretly griped about ever since the Outer Senshi team had been completed, as they all got functional weapons (or in Michiru's case, a useful item).  
At her outburst, the cyborg general remembered what he had just been doing.  
_SMASH!_  
As she groaned pitifully and slid down onto the ground alongside little chunks of the wall behind her, Jupiter couldn't help but feel this wouldn't have happened to her if someone would just give HER a damn sword.  
The other Senshi winced as they saw the Russian dispatch their team powerhouse; despite Jupiter's training, she hadn't been in real combat for a while, and the cybernetic man seemed to shrug off her blows while crushing her with his.  
Quickly regrouping around their leader, Mars, Mercury, and Venus all took a moment to dust themselves off while desperately hoping that Usagi had gotten her act together.  
"All right, fiend!" The blonde cyborg said happily, jabbing her left energy blade in the Russian's direction and grinning at hearing it snap and sizzle in the air. "Now I'm serious! Prepare yourself!"  
Igov again raised an eyebrow, and decided to humor the poor girl that was yet again giving him every opening in the world to destroy her now. "Is very nice to allow Igov time to prepare," he said with a bemused smile. "Authorities will arrive less than two minutes. Igov retreat for now."  
Usagi blinked in surprise, forgetting that they had been on a time limit. "Hey! Wait! We can't let you go! We have questions for you!" She waved her arms in the air threateningly, which actually ended up looking quite comical as the energy blades hisses and crackled against the air friction.  
"Questions... hmmm..." The Russian smirked. "Igov cannot stay. If you want... questions answered, meet Igov in Yosumatsu city park immediately." Seeing the girls behind the bunny-eared one begin to charge up energy attacks, Igov set the coordinates for his personal chronosphere and sent a silent command to his nearby cyborg corps. "Hurry."  
_SSSSHOOOOOOM!_  
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Usagi growled in irritation as their target vanished in a flash of blue and white light, and moved her hand to scratch behind her head.  
A moment later she was on the ground shouting in pain as the sizzling scar on her cheek slowly cooled off; she had been quick to forget that her new weapons were actually attached to her arms.  
As Mars and Venus tried to calm down their flailing leader in order to keep her from injuring herself further, Mercury staggered up to where Jupiter was trying to haul herself up off the ground.  
"Are you all right? We have to get out of here as soon as possible." Mercury could already hear the incoming police sirens, and had no desire to be surrounded while stuck in a pile of rubble. Recent events had proven that even the Senshi weren't above common law, and she had no desire to find herself on the inside of a jail cell once again.  
Jupiter shook her head as she allowed the genius Senshi to hoist her up. "Yeah, I'll be okay. Nothing broken that won't grow back..." 'DAMN that guy was strong! Felt like a freight train hit me...'  
Mercury took one of Jupiter's arms and pulled it over her shoulders, helping the taller girl up the side of the wreckage where the others were.

"OW! GODDAMN IT, MOON!" Sailor Mars screamed as she grabbed her thigh in pain, a new, searing black stripe decorating her fair, creamy skin.  
Realizing that she had inadvertently slashed her friend, Usagi immediately "eeped" and started to cry, her wrist blades suddenly deactivating. "WAAAAAH! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! I promise! Please don't hurt me!"  
Mars growled and grabbed the cyborg by one of her bunny ears/sensor arrays, hauling her to her feet as the blonde yelped timidly. "We've gotta get outta here! Get your metal ass in gear already!" Without waiting for their leader to regain her balance, Mars took off, quickly reaching the peak of the rubble and then leaping to the adjacent building (weakened though it was from the sudden addition of Sailor Jupiter to its superstructure).  
Usagi was about to follow as Venus took off after the fire Senshi, when she noticed Mercury dragging a weary-looking Jupiter up to her.  
"Jupiter, are you going to be able to keep up?" Usagi asked seriously, doubting they had much of a chance if they had to drop their best fighter off before meeting this new villain.  
The ponytailed girl began to nod, but then Mercury shook her head as her visor completed its hasty scans. "She can't jump anywhere; her left leg has been fractured. Her Senshi healing powers are all that's keeping the bones set right now."  
Usagi frowned deeply, and her sensor fins twitched. Besides taking to the rooftops, there was no other way to get away that didn't involve barreling through the authorities. She wouldn't have minded so much if it was the DAPC, since they had parted on fairly good terms, but the computer in her head was telling her it was some group called Core instead, and she had a feeling she didn't want to deal with them. "Well, I can carry her, then."  
Both Mercury and Jupiter were quite surprised when Usagi, their frail and lazy leader, stepped up next to Jupiter, hooked one arm under her knees, and then swung the taller girl up into her arms bridal style.  
Mercury was simply stunned that Usagi had managed it so easily. Jupiter was too, but this was compounded by the fact that she was quite embarrassed to have a smaller woman holding her like this.  
"Well... okay. That's good... but can you jump like that?" Sailor Mercury asked, looking over Usagi's shoulders and wincing at the sight of armed men in heavy armor slowly advancing on the Technology Center.  
Usagi seemed to consider this seriously for a moment.  
_Ker-chunk!_ In response, two fins burst out from under her shoulderblades, and then each one split as a small cylinder with an engine nozzle on the end poked out between the plates of each fin.  
"Oh. Right. The rocket boosters," Mercury mumbled, having forgotten that she alone had any kind of grasp on the kinds of devices Usagi possessed.  
This fully explained the look of surprise on Usagi's face, and the look of dread and dismay on Makoto's.  
"I have ROCKET BOOSTERS!"  
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Mars frowned pensively as she looked back toward the thin streams of smoke that marked the Senshis' last battlefield. "What's taking them so long? Meatball head wasn't having any trouble keeping up when we were headed down there in the first place!"  
Sailor Venus wrung her hands nervously. "You don't think Jupiter was injured, do you? That tall guy creamed her pretty good."  
"Aw, crap," the Fire Senshi mumbled. She hadn't thought of that. "Next time the city votes on police funding, I'm voting no. I don't like this whole 'quick response' B.S. they have going on now," the raven-haired girl complained.  
Venus sweatdropped, then blinked in surprise as she saw a flare of light shoot up from below the rooftops, spiralling around the plumes of smoke. "Hey, what's that?"  
Mars crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side as she watched the small, glimmering light zip back and forth uncertainly before taking off in their direction.  
A distant blue spot jumped onto the roof a moment later, and began making its own way toward them.  
The blue dot was Sailor Mercury, Mars quickly figured out. But what was that bright light?  
Venus winced, and began to step back, as if preparing to flee. "Uh... is someone shooting a missile at us?"  
Mars squinted her eyes as she stared harder at the light, which had stopped its random zig-zagging and was now heading straight for them.  
Her eyebrow twitched. "No, that's not a missile."  
"Oh. That's good!" The Senshi of Love said, having come under heavy fire during their endeavor in the junk yard, and having no desire to deal with modern explosives ever again (and THIS is the woman who wants to date Snake? Oi).  
Mars twitched again. "No. No, it's not."  
Venus stared at the raven-haired Senshi, waiting for her to elaborate, and growing more confused when she did not.  
She was about to question Sailor Mars, when a pair of loud, howling voices reached her ears, and she quickly figured it out on her own.  
"WHOOOOOAAAAAAH!"  
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!"  
_WOOOSH!_ Venus and Mar's hair billowed out behind them as Usagi and Jupiter flew by much faster and much closer to the ground than anyone in their right mind would deem safe.  
"I kind of imagined that things would get BETTER as Usagi learned more about being half robot," Mars mumbled, more to herself than to the blonde next to her trying to keep her skirt down against the wind (Rei recognized such an attempt as futile, and as such didn't even bother; it wasn't like the skirt covered much when it was down, anyway).  
_WHAM!_  
Venus winced and immediatley ran toward the cloud of settling dust that had appeared behind them.  
Mars stayed put and faced straight forward, lost in a sudden, delightful fantasy about how wonderful it would be if the founding of Crystal Tokyo purged the blonde gene as well as evil and darkness. 'I'll have to ask Ami about the possibilities later.'

"This hurts..." Usagi whined, lying on her back at the end of a ten-foot trench that her body had dug through the ground.  
Opposite the stretch of damaged ground, Sailor Jupiter hung from a tree branch. Luckily for her, Usagi had hit the ground on her back, which resulted in the Thunder Senshi being thrown from the "landing" rather than being pasted between the cyborg and the ground. Despite this, the process in which she had come to a complete stop had been rather harsh on her already damaged body, and as such the ponytailed girl was spending her time contemplating her life flashing before her eyes rather than trying to get down.  
'My old sempai could SO kick Mamoru's ass,' she decided.  
Venus quickly rushed up to the pair, and stopped as she looked between Usagi and Sailor Jupiter, wondering which one she should help first. She eventually settled on Jupiter since she wasn't even lying down.  
"Usagi, are you okay?" Venus asked her fellow blonde as she gently pulled Jupiter down from the tree.  
The cyborg groaned. "Hold on. Lemme check."  
Trauma classification: high-level concussive damage incurred. Significant structural damage indicated. Total systems down: Kinetic absorbtion field, ion jets, auxiliary boosters offline. Kinetic dampeners offline. Total damage: significant. Activating secondary repair units.  
"I still have no idea!" Usagi whined, slowly pushing herself into the sitting position.  
As soon as she was upright, a pair of hatches on her shoulders popped open, and two small silver spheres emerged on thin, spindly legs.  
Sailor Venus and Jupiter, who was leaning on the blonde for support, both froze and gaped as they watched the pair of tiny, spider-like robots crawl over onto Usagi's back.  
"Gack! Spiders! You have spiders crawling on you!" Venus shouted in shock, waving her arms and consequently dropping Jupiter painfully on the ground.  
The Thunder Senshi let out a strangled cry as she fell, and her thoughts immediately began to mirror Rei's along the lines of magically enforced eugenics.  
"I have what crawling on me?" Usagi asked, twitching as she suddenly felt a warm, scratchy sensation on her back.  
Jupiter groaned. "Would you knock it off Venus?" she mumbled into the dirt. "They're obviously some sort of repair robot... things..." At least, that was her best guess, seeing how they congregated along the scars and abrasions on Usagi's back, and the way that little showers of sparks erupted from under them.

When Sailor Mars and Mercury finally arrived at the end of Yosumatsu park, where Usagi had "landed", they both took in the sight of two robot spiders crawling on her back and poking her with tiny welding tips in stride.  
Seeing how Usagi seemed to be literally trying to turn her head around backwards to see down her own back, they were just thankful that she wasn't capable of that, too.  
"Mars! Do I really have spiders on my back?" Usagi asked, trembling slightly and freezing absolutely still. Hearing what Jupiter had said helped her keep from panicking, but she was still obviously nervous.  
The Senshi of Fire frowned and walked up to Usagi, observing one of the repair drones closely. With a better view, she could see that the body of the drone had a single circular red sensor on one side, and that several tiny articulated arms were poking out of the bottom, assisting in the reconstruction of Usagi's shredded rocket boosters.  
"Gotcha!" She shouted, snatching one of the drones up and grasping it around its body.  
Grinning, she held up her prize for Usagi and the others to see as its legs flailed about wildly.  
Usagi frowned. "Uh... Mars, I think you're scaring it..."  
The raven-haired woman snorted. "It's just a dumb robot, meatball head. You know, like you, but apparently useful."  
Just as Usagi was about to burst into tears and make several unflattering edits to Rei's scan profile, the repair drone stopped its struggling, and activated its welding torch instead.  
_Fsht!_ "SONUVABITCH!"  
Usagi blinked, startled, as the spider droid dropped onto the ground and quickly skittered onto her leg. Then it stopped, turned its sensor eye toward the seething Fire Senshi, and released a number of agitated clicking noises as it waved two of its legs threateningly at its tormentor.  
"Little metal bastard!" Mars growled as she shook her hand. "I'll get you for that!"  
At this point, Usagi naturally decided that she liked the tiny spider droids, and immediately scooped up the one on her leg before holding it against her chest protectively. "Leave him alone! It's your own fault for being mean!"  
"What, so you want the disgusting little things crawling all over you?"  
"It's not disgusting! I think it's cute!"

"I really don't think we have time for this," Mercury mumbled as she typed away on the Mercury Computer. "We have to find that... thing... and capture him."  
Usagi stopped arguing with Mars, and frowned as drone in her hand jumped up onto her shoulder and continued its work. "Igov isn't a 'thing' Mercury. He's just a cyborg, like me."  
Mars snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. "Told you. He's the same guy from that article I showed you, remember?"  
The Senshi of Ice shook her head. "We can't make assumptions. I didn't get a chance to scan him before when we fought."  
"Oh, don't worry about it. I scanned him!" Usagi said, raising her hand.  
The others blinked at her in tandem, clearly surprised.  
"Well, at least she did SOMETHING useful during that fight," Mars groused.  
Usagi ignored her and recalled Igov's file. "Designation: General Yutchzky, Igov. Codename: Red Death. Classification: Cyborg unit type A, class B. Species: Human. Weapons: Modified XM-320 minigun, LS-99 Tesla Battle Claw, concussion grenade launcher. Special equipment: Personal chronosphere, tight-beam control node, optical sensor suite, laser marker."  
At this point the other Senshi stopped staring at Usagi and started staring at Ami, having long passed the point where the torrent of data made sense to them.  
"Special skills: Expert field commander and master tactician. World-class engineer and expert in cybernetics, robotics, and weapons. Miscellaneous: General in the Freedom's Angels terrorist organization. Commander of the cyborg corps and direct subordinate to General Tokima. An experienced Russian military officer with decades of expertise and a cache of lost technology. Hates the DAPC."  
Mercury nodded slowly, taking the data in and analyzing each note. "Wait... how does your scanning computer know about his rank and who he serves under?" The bluette mumbled in confusion.  
Usagi shrugged. "I dunno. It gets pretty wordy and detailed like that sometimes."  
Sailor Mars sighed. "Did it say anything about a weak point?"  
Usagi frowned. "Hold on a minute..." Asking the question in her head, the usual text soon appeared.  
Records indicate that Igov's central control nodes are vulnerable to concentrated electro-magnetic pulses. In addition, the presence of a chronosphere suggests that minor damage to the device may cause temporal disturbances that would likely result in either a system shutdown or target termination.  
Mars tapped her foot impatiently as Usagi kept sitting in place with her left eyebrow twitching. "Well?"  
"Uhhhhhhhhh..." Usagi shook her head and then began to massage it tenderly. "No. No weaknesses," she lied. 'Forget trying to explain that to them. I couldn't even read half those words!'  
"Well, that's just great," Venus said, glancing at Jupiter who was still leaning on her. "So here we are, wounded, tired, and without Sailor Moon's powers, and we're supposed to find and capture a robot man who can teleport at will?"  
"More to the point, the 'robot man' is apparently an expert strategist," Mercury noted, closing her computer. "Which perfectly explains why he was willing to let us escape from the authorities on our own and then chase after him to an area of his choosing with one of us barely able to walk. Has anyone else noticed that despite being a public park in the middle of the day, this place is completely deserted?"  
Apparently it hadn't, and the others looked around in surprise.  
"So, you're saying he's leading us into a trap?" Jupiter asked, unsteadily pushing herself away from Sailor Venus to stand on her own.  
"I'm positive," Mercury asserted. "And keep in mind, I still can't track him since he doesn't-"  
"Try looking for chronometric particles," Usagi said suddenly, interrupted the team genius.  
The blue-skirted Senshi blinked. "Looking for WHAT?"  
"Chronometric particles," Usagi repeated, stretching suddenly. The fins on her back flexed up and down experimentally, and then retracted themselves into her back. "That's how I found him in the first place." Their job completed, Usagi's repair drones scampered back up to her shoulders and slipped into their repository bays.  
Mercury stared hard at the ponytailed cyborg, trying to detect signs of deceit. "Did you just make that up? Sailor Moon, there's no such thing as 'chronometric particles'."  
Usagi blinked in surprise, then scowled as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, someone should tell the stupid computer in my head that. It keeps finding them everywhere, and won't stop bugging me about it. It just says 'chronoshift in progress!' over and over again." It didn't even occur to Usagi that perhaps the particles actually did exist and Ami didn't know of them; Ami was the smartest person Usagi knew, and as far as she was concerned, anything that came out of the bluette's mouth was absolute fact.  
Such a thing did occur to said bluette, however, and Mercury frowned as she considered the possibility that Usagi was geared to detect energy forms that she hadn't even heard of. "Hmmm... Well, can you tell me where the last concentration of these... 'chronometric particles' supposedly appeared?"  
Usagi nodded, finally standing up.  
Fingering her chin, the blonde's rabbit ears twitched for a moment, and then she pointed toward a brick utility building several meters away. "There!"

Sailor Venus wasted no time once their leader gave them a target. "**Venus Crescent Beam Shower**!"  
A thick beam of light emerged from her hand before splitting apart into several smaller beams, each of them curling around to strike the lonely building. _BLAM!_  
Usagi blinked in surprise, though she wasn't even watching as the utility closet was ground into so much dust. "Wait, he moved! He's over-" she was about to point behind them, when suddenly a bright red exclamation mark began flashing in her face repeatedly.  
'Wait, what does that mean again?' The cyborg wondered, stopping to scratch her head as her teammates frantically asked where their target had teleported.  
A distant whistling noise jump-started her memory, and her eyes widened.  
"RUN! NOW!"  
_KA-KROOM! KROOM! KROOM!_  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuxedo Kamen winced as he landed on the next roof, feeling tiny tendrils of pain seep up his legs.  
Gritting his teeth, he bore it and started running again, clearing the length of rooftop before jumping again to land on the next one, and idly wondering why this kind of thing always happened to him.  
He had actually left his hospital bed when he'd transformed, and wasn't looking forward to explaining his departure once he made it back. Nor did he want to have doctors fussing over why his bullet wounds - which had already been healing at a surprising rate - had vanished while he had been out and about.  
As for the constant pain, it wasn't actually that bad, as his Kamen form accelerated the healing, but it was a discouraging way to be reminded that the Senshi had suddenly become active again after so long. Which in turn reminded him that his girlfriend had as much in common with a toaster oven as with her fated lover nowadays.  
Still, he had his duty, and since the alternative was lying in a hospital bed and watching Tokyo Mew Mew reruns...  
Well, it still wasn't an easy decision for him to make, really, but he decided that the Senshi needed him more than the television station needed ratings.  
'I wonder what Rei would look like as a catgirl,' the tuxedo-clad man wondered, leaping off the next roof. He'd always regretted that his relationship with the Fire Senshi had never gone anywhere before he went with Usagi; it would've been nice to have options in a situation like the one he was in now.  
Stopping in the middle of the next roof, he stopped and turned, frowning as he sensed Usagi's position shift rapidly.  
"Gyah!" As a result, he came face to face with a pigtailed man in a blue police uniform, and flinched back.  
Ranma smiled and waved in a completely non-threatening manner. "Hey there! Whatcha up to?"  
Tuxedo Kamen blinked, and he quickly composed himself. 'Where the hell did he come from?' "Sorry, I have no time to chat. Farewell!" Grabbing the edge of his cape as he turned, the garment billowed out behind him in a heroic manner as he turned toward the park where Usagi had stopped, and leapt to the next building.

Ranma shrugged and then followed, allowing the masked man to get a bid of a lead on him.  
At first when he'd seen somebody hopping over rooftops and wearing formal evening wear, he'd immediately considered that the man might be a vampire out for a run; he'd heard that the more powerful nosferatu were creatures of nobility and class, so they'd be the type to be wearing that sort of thing. It wasn't until he had gained on the figure significantly that he realized that outside, in the middle of the day, even the most powerful vampire would be incapable of bounding across rooftops as this man was.  
The man was suspicious though, and seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry, so Ranma had followed. He had been on his way to see Usagi, but anything important that required the attention of roof-hopping masked men seemed like the sort of thing that should have priority.  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Usagi quickly scrambled to her feet, ignoring the short rain of dirt that fell over her as a result of the sudden artillery strike.  
Luckily, solid ground didn't generate as much dust and debris as a collapsing building, so her view of the area was fairly unobscured. On her left, Mercury and Mars were pushing themselves off the ground in a daze. On her right, Venus groaned painfully with Jupiter lying on top of her.  
She frowned as she realized the two flirtatious Senshi wouldn't be getting up any time soon. Though they hadn't taken a direct hit, it was clear the force of blast had knocked the fight out of them.  
As the sparse clouds of dust and thin tendrils of smoke began to clear, the blonde cyborg blanched, seeing a single glowing point of red light through the settling ash.  
'You can do this!' She said to herself after a moment, steeling herself. 'He's just a cyborg, like you. He's just more used to this sort of thing! You can take him, Sailor Moon! Oh, well, he also has artillery backup. I forgot about that. And a teleportation device. Plus he's even stronger than Sailor Jupiter.'  
Usagi choked back a sob. What on Earth had possessed them to actually chase after this man?  
"**Mars Flame Sniper**!" The Senshi of Fire shouted, pulling back one arm as the lance of flame flickered into view.  
Igov had already set his transport coordinates as the red-skirted one took aim, quite grateful that the girls had to make wasteful gestures and take time to charge their attacks before discharging them. He was quite certain that the energy blasts themselves were strong enough to destroy him with a single good hit; thus, his only recourse was to not get hit.  
_SSSSSHOOOOOOM!_  
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Far away on the planet Pluto, a woman with long green hair collapsed onto her rear and screamed to the heavens, declaring that the rules put in place forbidding alcohol on the job in her place of work were discriminatory and unfair.  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Igov phased into being behind Sailor Mars, as usual having to stop for a moment to get oriented as all his scanners recalibrated.  
This was just long enough for the raven-haired woman to realize that he was there, and she ducked as a lightning-charged claw tore through the air where her head had been a moment previous.  
Twisting around, Sailor Mars balled her left hand into a fist, and let loose a vicious haymaker into the cyborg's stomach.  
_CLANG!_ "OW! My hand!"  
To her credit, Igov stumbled back a moment before he recovered from the blow; that part of his body was heavy and well-armored enough to take shotgun blasts at point-blank without difficulty. Bringing his right arm down from the missed slash, he slammed his elbow into the Fire Senshi's head, knocking her to the side and nearly cracking her skull right open.  
Darting backward, he barely avoided getting slashed as the blonde in the black bodysuit dove at him, her wrist blades activated once again.  
Igov was about to counter the attack, but after she missed the ponytailed girl teetered forward and started waving her arms about frantically. Then she fell forward flat on her face, accidentally stabbing both of her energy blades down into the ground.  
Having paused at the unexpected reaction, Igov didn't realize that the blue-skirted Senshi had completed one of her attacks until she was ready to release it.

"**Shabon Spray**!" Mercury called out, shooting the mist forward and enveloping the Russian and her friends in a cool, obscuring fog. She would have preferred launching something more... offensive, but the cyborg's tendency toward close combat made it unwise to risk friendly fire.  
Darting forward, she grabbed Usagi by the shoulder, trying to help her up. After the ponytailed girl merely stumbled forward again, the genius Senshi quickly realized what was wrong: Usagi was trying to stabilize herself with her hands. Her hands had twenty-inch energy blades situated above them, and these same blades were digging into the ground, disrupting and loosening the dirt and rock such that her hands just sunk down into it wherever she placed them.  
Grabbing her leader by the shoulders, Mercury hoisted Usagi up fully, nearly getting slashed across the face for her trouble as the blonde cyborg windmilled her arms suddenly in surprise.  
"Moon, get up! We have to ge-" _Thwomp!_  
Usagi's eyes widened as she watched the Senshi of Ice sail away from Igov's kick, skidding on the ground and eventually slamming into the trunk of a tree.  
Igov snorted as he deactivated his thermal vision, and then firmly slammed his foot onto Usagi's back, crushing her against the ground. "'Pretty soldier' indeed. Igov will end this charade." _BZRT!_ Electricity started to curl around the extended claws on his right hand as the mist around them began to dissipate, and although Usagi couldn't see what was happening above her, she could guess that it was going to hurt.  
_Thwip!_

Igov held the charge in his Tesla claw as he glanced at the rose that had suddenly pierced his right forearm.  
Behind him, a male voice started shouting a monologue.  
Guessing that, like the girls, he would be at it long enough to finish an attack, and seeing how the rose hadn't caused any critical damage, 'Why didn't he aim at my head or neck, if he had a free shot and possesses a weapon that can pierce my armor?' Igov continued to charge his Tesla claw to full power, causing a ball of writhing blue energy to gather between the gleaming, razor-sharp talons.

"Fear not, Sailor Moon," Tuxedo Kamen shouted from his rooftop, not noticing that for once his enemy hadn't been distracted by the attack, "for no matter what kind of foe-"  
_THWACK!_

Sailor Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, all of whom had been giving the masked interloper their full attention from their prone positions on the ground, all blinked in surprise and tore their eyes away from Tuxedo Kamen at the sudden noise.  
Igov flew backwards and hit the ground hard, kicking up dust, with a noticeable dent in his cheek.  
Ranma completed his roundhouse kick, returning his foot to the ground gingerly as pain shot up and down his leg. "Hmph. Skull's as thick as ever, tin can," the pigtailed man spat, sparing a glance at Usagi to make sure she wasn't visibly maimed. "What the hell are you doing here? The Angels want their new toy back?"  
Igov didn't really know what the police officer was talking about, so thought it more useful to launch the ball of electric energy he was holding at his assailant rather than try and start a conversation.  
Ranma jumped over the screaming orb of lightning, then twisted into a kick as he came down on top of the cyborg general.  
Said cyborg general snarled and began to glow.  
_SSSSSSHOOOOOOM!_

Up on an adjacent rooftop, Tuxedo Kamen trailed off mumbling as he finally realized that nobody was paying attention to him.  
'Wait a minute. That's the cop who was following me! How'd he make it all the way here?' As the masked man had not imagined that anyone other than a Senshi could bound across rooftops like he could, and was completely focused on his destination, he never did figure out that he had been followed.  
He frowned as he watched the pigtailed man dart across the crater-ridden field as the Russian man appeared again, and dodged two sudden explosions before striking the enemy again in the head with his other leg.  
This man was fighting the bad guy. Face-to-face. One-on-one. He was totally in the thick of it, narrowly escaping being blown to pieces while launching a sustained assault on the enemy.  
"What is he, a woman?" Tuxedo Mask scoffed.  
After all, male heroes were supposed to be mysterious and aloof, only helping enough to get the women out of a tight spot and giving them the encouragement they needed to succeed for themselves.  
Weren't they?

_Crack!_ Ranma winced as he felt pain shoot up his left arm, and grimaced as he realized he only had one more limb that wasn't in danger of breaking against Igov's metal body.  
'Damn it, I need to remember to carry my weapons around with me all the time,' he thought as he ducked under another slash, feeling his hair stand on end as electricity crackled above him. 'I just thought I was gonna be talking to some college student, not fighting this jerk!'  
Igov wasn't feeling much better. 'Damnation! My forces are too far away to make it here in time! I just thought I was going to be crushing these foolish women, not fighting this peon!' Small sparks sputtered out of his optical peripheral, which he had shut off once Ranma introduced his heel to the lens.  
_SSSSSSSHOOOOOOOM!_  
Ranma clicked his tongue as the cyborg vanished, keeping alert for the Russian on the edge of his senses.  
He had just picked Igov's presence up, when Usagi's voice distracted him.  
"It's the artillery! Run!" Usagi herself had finally figured out how to turn off her energy blades at will, and had scrambled to her feet as soon as the exclamation marks started flashing. 'Oh no! I'm too close! I think... Gah!' She managed to spot the incoming shots this time, making out several tiny black dots sailing down into the park from above.  
_Vwom!  
KRAKOOM! KROOM! KROOM!_

The blonde cyborg winced with her eyes squeezed shut as she felt waves of heat rake her sides, followed by the familiar sensation of ravaged dirt and rock raining down on top of her head.  
'Wait, why isn't anything touching my front?' She thought, realizing that she had been facing the explosion.  
Once she cracked her eyes open, she was pleasntly surprised to see that there was a glowing, five-foot long "plate" of soft blue energy attached to the back of her combat bracer. It was was perfectly flat, and covered by a hex-grid pattern that Usagi could only assume was functional rather than ornamental as bits of rock bounced off the surface, causing the particular hex that it touched to flare briefly.  
Sailor Mercury slowly pushed herself to her feet, glad that the newcomer had taken the fight far enough away from the rest of them that none of the incapacitated Senshi were struck by the barrage.  
"Okay, yeah. Now I'm jealous too," the Senshi of Ice muttered as she stared at the energy shield. 'It's not fair! Usagi's new powers are so cool! And she doesn't even know how to use them!'

Igov growled as he watched the dust and ash settle from the dubious safety of a cluster of trees, seeing no sign of the pigtailed officer.  
Of course, had the attack struck perfectly, this would be the expected result; not even Ranma could survive a direct hit from an artillery shell. But Igov knew better. No way was it that easy.  
_Krk!_ Feeling a tugging sensation on his right arm, and once again cursing that his foe had disabled his sensors, Igov whirled around, swiping his left hand through the air blindly.  
Ranma ducked under the clumsy attack easy, and then flipped over Tuxedo Kamen's rose in his hand, which he had yanked free from the Russian's arm.  
_Skrak!_ Viciously driving it upward into the underside of Igov's chin, Ranma was rewarded by a sudden shower of sparks and a burst of steam as the armor-piercing flower penetrated the thin layer of armor there and dug into vital components.  
_Bwack!_ Igov's retaliatory strike hit home, but Ranma was grinning despite the pain as he tucked into a roll, eventually bouncing to his feet.  
'Graah! This is... NO! I can't go on...' The cyborg thought as his vision suddenly went gray, still feeling something akin to pain as damage reports started flooding his brain.  
Stumbling to one side in his attempt to steady himself, he felt another jet of pressurized gases burst from the wound, and immediately began setting the coordinates for a chronoshift.  
'No matter... in the end, today's mission was a success...' He thought bitterly, failing to cheer himself up as the temporal energies surrounded him and made good his retreat.  
_SSSSSSHOOOOOOM!_  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Heh. That'll teach the jerk," Ranma said as he massaged his bruised ribs, marveling at how lightly he had gotten off in his latest battle against the Communist general. 'Well, we were both unprepared. I guess I just improvise better than he does.'  
Smirking at that thought, he turned to see the Sailor Senshi picking themselves up off the ground, and Usagi staring at him with wide eyes.  
"Hey Usagi-chan! You all right?" He asked, waving a hand at her as he jogged forward.  
To his confusion, she gasped in surprise.

Sailor Mars winced, though it was as much from her throbbing head as from this newest complication concerning their leader. "Well, that's just great. No disguise field. But her new transformation is still running four-to-one against ours."  
Mercury sighed as she limped up to the raven-haired woman. "Well, apparently she can't use her magic powers; doesn't that count against it?"  
"It would, if we could actually hit that metal freak with ours," Mars said bitterly, rocking back and forth a bit as the ground seemed to tilt underneath her. "Speaking of which, didn't you say that she had all of her magic powers?"  
The genius Senshi lowered her head abashedly. "Well... she does, actually. How was I supposed to know that she'd forget how to use them?"  
"That's our princess: phenomenal cosmic power... itty-bitty brain," Mars groused as her world finally decided on an angle and stuck with it. Then she glanced over at the cyborg in question talking with the pigtailed man, and her aggravated expression lessened. 'That's the guy who saved Usagi before, isn't it? She was right; he IS dreamy...'

"No, no, no! I'm not Usagi! I'm Sailor Moon!" Usagi insisted stubbornly, not realizing that she was missing one of the Senshi transformation's important energy fields.  
"Yeah, so I've heard," Ranma said conversationally, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Look, if you wanna play superhero, that's fine, but that's not even a disguise. Your face is completely exposed and everything. You think adding a pair of robot bunny ears is going to keep people from recognizing you?"  
Usagi was about to make an argument as to how magical forces that didn't make any sense to her in the first place kept people from recognizing her, but Ranma's question stopped her short. "Wait, bunny ears? Is THAT what they look like?" She immediately grabbed one of the sensor fins atop her head and ran her hand over it, trying to visualize its shape.  
"What, you mean you didn't know?" Venus asked, staggering up to the pair with Jupiter in tow.  
"I knew they were there, but I didn't know they were shaped like rabbit ears," Usagi mumbled, finally letting her hand down. "Do they look good on me?"  
Ranma and the other Senshi sweatdropped.  
"Uh... yes! They look really cute! Honest!" Sailor Venus said, elbowing Sailor Jupiter lightly in the stomach. "Jupiter! Tell her how good she looks!"  
"Hm? Oh, yeah. Great," the ponytailed girl mumbled distractedly, staring at Ranma appraisingly.  
"Senshi! Are you unharmed?"

Tuxedo Kamen smiled slightly as he alighted upon the ground, seeing everyone's attention shift to him again. "I came as quickly as I could. I'm glad you're all safe."  
Usagi immediately lowered her head and seemed to shrink in on herself, which was an unfortunate, but expected reaction from her after their last meeting. What was unexpected was that Sailors Mars and Jupiter were actually glaring at him openly.  
'Since when were they so ungrateful?' He thought to himself, stopping in his tracks. Even Mercury and Venus had waved him off by now and were now paying attention to the cop again.  
"Hey, thanks for your help!" That same police officer said cheerfully; another unexpected result. "That rose you threw slowed Igov down just enough for me to get to him. And it came in handy later, too. They must be really sharp!"  
Sharp or not, Ranma would have much rather had his kodachi or even his combat knife instead of having to try and impale the cyborg on a magic plant, but one had to work with what one could get his hands on.  
This masked guy obviously did.  
Sailor Mars snorted derisively. "They're sharper than the wielder, that's for sure." Then she turned toward Ranma, suddenly smiling. "You were VERY impressive. But where's the rest of you pysc-er-officers?"  
"Oh, well, they all have patrol and stuff elsewhere," Ranma explained as he pointed to Tuxedo Kamen, "I was just following this guy and happened to see you fighting Yutchzky." Then he frowned. "Why were you doing that anyway? He's a pretty dangerous guy."  
Usagi sighed. "We were trying to capture him for information."  
Ranma looked alarmed. "Capture Igov? That IS dangerous... and it looks like it didn't go over very well."  
"Yes, well, you DID let him escape," Kamen pointed out, feeling a bit miffed that this new guy had stolen the spotlight right out from under him. He wasn't even a superhero!  
Ranma shook his head. "Couldn't be helped. I wasn't about to try and disable his teleporter and try and take him down here." Then he gestured to the empty streets beyond the park. "Igov controls a small army of cyborgs and boomers. If he felt he was cornered, he might bring the whole damn force down on this place. They'd probably wipe out a couple of city blocks in the process, too." He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. "You really shouldn't be trying to mess with someone like him; I don't know if you're a better model cyborg or about the same or whatever, but Igov's pretty crafty, and he has loads of experience and troops. Best to steer clear of him."  
At this point, everybody but Usagi joined Kamen in feeling miffed; true, the Russian general had caught them badly off-guard, but who did this cop think he was talking to? They were the Sailor Senshi, saviors of the entire planet!  
Usagi, for whatever reasons, was feeling more humble, and bowed to the police officer. "Okay Ranma-san. Thank you for saving us!"  
"Eh, just doing my job," Ranma mumbled, waving her off as he fumbled around in his jacket pocket. "I'm glad I ran into you, though." Glancing around at the other girls, he gestured off to the side. "Can I speak to you in private for a minute?"  
"Oh, uh, sure!" Usagi said uncertainly, following the pigtailed man as he led her away.

"I don't like him," Tuxedo Kamen growled once the pair was out of earshot, "just who is that guy?"  
"He's a member of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment," Sailor Mercury explained.  
"You've run into them before," Mars said, smirking at the masked man. "Remember that guy with the bandanna?"  
Kamen stiffened, and his frown became a scowl. "What's Usagi doing associating with THEM?"  
"I have no idea," Mars said honestly, shrugging. "Looks like it paid off, though. I wonder what they're talking about..."  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So we just need ya to fill out some forms and drop 'em off later," Ranma explained as Usagi scanned the registration pamphlet. "If you don't know the answer to any of the questions there, you can just leave it blank. We don't need to know everything about you. We just need to be able to get in contact with you if necessary."  
Usagi nodded slowly. "Okay... but why would you need to contact me?"  
Ranma shrugged. "Well, if something big happens around here, we know you're probably in a position to know what's going on. Also, since you've been fighting the Freedom's Angels, they might attack you, and this information will help us get to you quicker. Also, we sometimes ask the registered aliens and robots and stuff for help."  
"Hmmm... that does make sense," Usagi decided, looking up. "And why wouldn't the police want to enlist the warriors of love and justice?"  
"Uh..." Ranma sweatdropped. "Right. Just what I was thinking." Then he pointed to a spot on the pamphlet. "That lists the responsibilities you have as a registered cyborg. We're not going to keep tabs on you or bug your room or anything, but if you start blowing people's cars up again, we need to know how to find you, or we're the ones in trouble."  
The ponytailed cyborg has the decency to blush, remembering the circumstances of their last meeting. "Okay, that's fair. Was there anything else?"  
"Just the registration cards," Ranma said, taking out an envelope from his pocket. Opening it up, he flipped through the stack of ten plastic cards and picked out the one marked Sailor Moon.  
He blinked as he looked at the picture on the front. "Whoa. You wear one of those nutty outfits too?"  
Usagi sighed. "That's my old crime-fighting costume. It looks like it doesn't work now that I'm a cyborg."  
Ranma raised an eyebrow and looked up at the ponytailed girl, holding the card in front of him for comparison. "I like your new suit better."  
Usagi blushed again and stuttered out a thank you. 'Huh. Everybody seems to think that I'm better off like this than as Sailor Moon... I wonder...'  
"Anyway, this card isn't up-to-date anymore, so you won't be needing it." Ranma crushed the plastic item in his hand, and handed her the rest. "Just give these out to your friends, and then they can blow up whatever they want when fighting evil, and we won't have to hear about it. If Core or the local police try and stop you or question you, just flash the card at them. They'll leave you alone at that point. In fact, sometimes they literally run away."  
Usagi nodded, looking at each card. 'Hmm... there's one for each of the outers, too, plus Tuxedo Kamen.' Still feeling an uncomfortable coldness every time she saw or thought of the masked man, she looked up again. "So is that all they do? Prove we're clear with you guys?"  
"Not quite; they give you free membership to some of the local circles that usually try and stay under the radar, as it were. I don't know much about them, though, other than the fact that they're terrified of the DAPC or anything associated with us." He shrugged. "They're also valid entry keycards to the Fat Man Contractor's armory uptown."  
The blonde cyborg blinked in surprise. "An armory? Why would they let us into there?"  
"It's sort of a holdover from the first guy we had to register," Ranma explained.  
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Achoo!  
As he wiped his nose, Rayden frowned, realizing that he was smearing blood over his face.  
Ignoring the minor discomfort, he immediately went back to slaughtering the den of Yakuza thugs, idly wondering when the hell he was going to get a proper introduction in this series.  
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"I wonder whatever happened to him?" Ranma asked aloud, rubbing his chin. "Huh. We should probably change that feature."  
Shaking his head, he waved to Usagi as he started to leave. "Well, I'm glad I found you again, but I've gotta go make some dead people much deader. See ya later, Usagi-chan!"  
"Oh! Uh..." Not sure what to make of his declared task, she waved back hesitantly. "Okay Ranma-san! Goodbye!"

As the police officer jogged away from the scene Usagi began to walk back to her friends, staring at Rei's registration I.D.  
'I wonder if I really do look better in this outfit. I always thought black wasn't my color.'  
When she looked up from the cards, she was surprised to see the other Senshi staring at her intently. Sailor Mars was even tapping her foot.  
"What? What is it?" The blonde cyborg asked nervously.  
"You work pretty fast, don't you?" Mars said with a tone that wavered between irritation and respect. "No wonder you got over your precious 'Mamo-chan' so quick!"  
Usagi blinked, not noticing as Tuxedo Kamen twitched. "Huh?"  
"Normally I'd say you should be careful about picking up guys on the rebound, but I have to admit this one is a pretty good call," Jupiter said enviously, rubbing her chin. "So, are you going steady yet, or do I still have a shot? Ooh! What are your thoughts on a three-way?"  
_Psht!_ A few sparks blasted out of Usagi's ear. "Huh?"  
Tuxedo Kamen growled, clutching the sides of his head. 'Damn! I didn't know they did that sort of thing! Why didn't anyone ever mention that to me?'  
Sailor Venus nodded in approval. "Not only is he a stud, but he's really strong, too! He's even better than Mamoru!"  
Usagi understood this sentence, but was fairly sure it was following the conversational path she had yet to grasp, so saw no need to change her response. "Huh?"  
"Hey! I'm standing right here, you know!" Tuxedo Kamen shouted angrily.  
From the way the Senshi jumped and then turned around, he was guessing they had not been aware.  
"Why are you still around? Aren't you supposed to mysteriously flee the scene after a battle?" Mars asked irritably, crossing her arms over her chest.  
The masked man frowned. "I just wanted to make sure you were all okay."  
"We were blasted by two artillery strikes and beaten half to death by a tin man with an electric claw," Jupiter deadpanned. "Do we look okay to you?" As she was still leaning on Venus for support in order to stand up, the answer was obvious.  
"Ah... well... no..." he stuttered out. "But that's why I was concerned!"  
"How nice of you," Mars said neutrally. "So what are you going to do now, since we're not okay?"  
Tuxedo Kamen looked back and forth between the Fire and Thunder Senshi, desperately groping for something to say.  
'Now I remember why I always leave early,' he thought bitterly to himself. Outwardly, he grabbed his cape and swept it in front of him dramatically. "I take my leave of you now. Fare thee well, pretty soldiers!"

As he turned around and quickly jumped onto the building behind him, he missed it when Usagi berated her two teammates for being unnecessarily harsh with him. Perhaps had he heard such a defense, he would've felt a bit better about his actions during this last encounter.  
As it was, the masked man was fuming as his mind took firm grasp of the one thing that had gone differently in the last battle, as opposed to all the other ones they had fought.  
Well, the one thing other than Usagi being a cyborg.  
And him being ignored like he was. What was up with that? Senshi and enemy alike were supposed to be entranced by his very presence!  
Speaking of which, the enemy had been pretty different too. He couldn't remember the last time someone fought them using modern weapons and simple tactics, instead of throwing powerful monsters at them.  
Maybe the fact that he was a cyborg instead of a monster bore some looking into also. That was a bit different.  
Tuxedo Kamen shook his head furiously, nearly knocking his top hat off. 'No! The only real variable was that man! I don't trust him!' After all, what kind of human could throw punches and kicks that could dent steel, or whatever metal composed the Russian's skeleton?  
Besides himself and all the Senshi, of course.  
'I'll be watching you, Ranma.' He swore.  
_TOOM!_ "GYAH! MY LEG! WHAT THE HELL!"  
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Snake frowned as he lowered his sniper rifle. "Oh. Wait. It's broad daylight. That can't be a vampire."  
Then he shrugged and turned around. "I'm thirsty."

Innocent guards and bystanders killed: 14  
Cyborgs sent packing: 1 (but he was doozy!)  
Masked superheroes shot... again: 1 (do I sense a running gag?)  
Critical objectives acquired by bad guys: 1

End Chapter 4


	5. Contact

"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."  
- Robert E. Lee

"War is the most noble and honorable form of murder there is. And it pays better than serial killing, too."  
- Ken "Snake" Yakata

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

Before the disclaimer, I'd like to respond to a reviewer who inconveniently forgot to leave an E-mail address or sign their review, prompting me to address the issue directly through the fic: Why do I bash Mamoru? Well, because I think it's funny. I don't actually hate Mamoru or anything, although I don't think much of him. I simply thought it would be funny to interject some comedy relief and chose him, based primarily on my need to create pretext for certain future plot points. Additionally, people LIKE Mamoru-bashing. It might be cliche, it might be overdone, it might be cheap, but it's enjoyable. I can't help that. I'm a slave to the audience. If enough people write reviews complaining about the treatment, I'll find a more gentle way to screw him over.

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **techniques or emphasis**, 'thoughts', (side comments)  
It would seem is slowly moving to eliminate every punctuation mark in their attempts to foil any possible literary achievement by its patrons. Brackets no longer show up. Henceforth, written signs as well as Usagi's internal computer will be read with +like this+, at least until they outlaw plus signs.

Millennium  
Chapter 5  
Contact

Sailor Saturn groaned as she cracked an eye open, having slowly been brought back to consciousness.  
She grimaced when opening her eyes failed to have any effect on her vision. Right. Dark cavern. Pitch black. Peachy.  
Her hand moved to the spot where she he had hit her head after falling, but found no bump or wound. Senshi healing at work, no doubt.  
Staggering to her feet, the Senshi of destruction considered her options. Most of her powers wouldn't help in her current situation; a silence wall wouldn't do anything but keep her feet drier. A silence glaive surprise could easily carve out an exit for her... and probably bring the rest of the mountain right down on top of her. With a more powerful blast she could probably vaporize the entire mountain, but it was still quite dangerous... especially to all the people inhabiting the mountain and making use of its hot springs. A part of her mind that reveled in the Silence and remained detached from humanity, the part of her that carried the memories of a Sailor Saturn long dead, argued that her survival was infinitely more important than that of the ignorant nobodies currently scattered all over the mountain, and pushed for the overwhelming force option. Hotaru's rational mind recoiled at the thought and quashed that idea. She WOULD find a different way to get out, no matter how slow or cumbersome.  
The sailor teleport was a possibility. She had enough power to simply warp out of the place, and she knew of no complications that could arise in her using it from deep within a mountain.  
Nodding her head, she chose her home back in Tokyo as her destination. She had no desire to go back to her class trip, and certainly didn't want to see the girls who had ditched her again. There might be some problems with her sudden disappearance, but for all she could tell she had been gone at least a full day already, so that issue was unavoidable. As long as her adoptive parents and fellow Senshi knew she was safe, that was all that really mattered.  
Invoking the teleportation, and remembering to close her eyes during the sudden, bright flash of light, Sailor Saturn vanished.

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Saturn spent several moments blinking her eyes repeatedly trying to adjust her vision after reaching her destination. Not because of the teleport, as she had remembered to shut her eyes as she rode that out, but rather because once she had arrived, her eyes had spent hours accustomed to complete darkness, and wherever she had ended up was well lit.  
Not very problematic, in and of itself. Once her vision recovered, however, a much bigger problem dawned on the Senshi of Silence.  
She was not in her room. She was not in her house. In fact, she was guessing she was no longer on planet Earth, though she supposed that given her recent surroundings, this location COULD feasibly be located underground somewhere, perhaps even in the very same mountain she had fallen into (this was correct, though she wouldn't know for quite some time).  
On the plus side, she wasn't sitting in an uncomfortably warm and completely dark underground stream. Still, being teleported into an even warmer and well-lit cavern boasting a huge, earthen, dark-invader-type fortress wasn't a huge improvement.  
She spent a moment gaping at the castle jutting out of the cavern wall as she stood at its gates. It looked as if it had been crudely carved out of the rock by hand, or more likely hundreds of hands, but had large plates of gleaming metal bolted onto the walls to protect the ramparts and a pristine pair of massive metal doors that belied its "ancient and primitive" look. Upon closer observation, metal shielding was actually one of the least interesting examples of technology mounted on the castle, as she spotted several small devices mounted at strategic places along the outer perimeter. Two such gadgets were mounted on the sides of the gate: little circles with dull red lenses that were clearly manufactured in the age of plastics, if not later. Both of these devices seemed to be in the midst of falling apart, however, and though she couldn't tell if they were still functional, on account of not knowing what their function was, she could tell that they had been here for quite some time without maintenance.  
Turning around, she regarded the space in front of the castle. She was standing before the edge of a vast canyon that stretched across most of the cavern, with several metal causeways bridging the gap. These structures had apparently been made of extremely sturdy metals, as they had been thickly encrusted by dirt and rock, but showed no sign of breakage or rust anywhere. Still, she would be cautious if she ended up having to walk across them.  
Especially seeing how the light in the cavern was actually originating from the gap. Timidly stepping over to the edge, Sailor Saturn looked down.  
She had fully expected, given the stereotypical bent of this place so far, to see a river of lava, acid, or even some overly creepy substance such as blood, bile, liquid darkness, or something like that. Instead she saw a seemingly endless array of small metal, trapezoidal pyramids rising up from about twenty meters below the canyon edge. They were positioned base-to-base, such that Saturn couldn't tell what was below them, if there was in fact anything but rock. The strange machines, which didn't remind her of any kind of Earth or Silver Millennium technology she remembered (not that she clearly remembered much Silver Millennium tech at all), glowed brightly as they endlessly expelled waves of blistering heat upward into the bowels of the cavern.  
There was more to her surroundings, but she dismissed them in favor of observing the fortress, as well as wondering how she had come to be here. There seemed to be nobody to greet/attack her, so it either was not done by some conscious will, or whoever had done it was lounging back in their throne room, waiting for her to come to them, like a typical villain.  
Sailor Saturn considered the situation, and sorely wished she knew a bit more about the mechanics of the Senshi magic. She had no clue how the teleport, or for that matter, any of her powers worked; she just said the words, waved her hands in the appropriate motions, and the desired effects occurred. Which was fine most of the time, but it appeared that something had interfered in her attempt to get from point A to point B while completely bypassing mass deposit C, and she had no clue how that was possible or how to get around it.  
That left three options.  
1: Try to teleport again and again until it worked. This struck her as a bad idea, since it was clear that she no longer had complete control over where she ended up. She had warped into a warm cavern over solid ground this time, but what would happen if she materialized in a rock wall, or over the Sea of Japan, or in space? No, from here on out she would travel strictly on foot.  
2: Try to walk out. There were only two directions to go: into the castle or across the crevasse into the tunnels beyond. However, she could tell that no light was coming from the tunnels and had no desire to go back to stumbling through complete darkness. Not only was it hard, slow, and potentially dangerous, but if there was some foe around here then they could attack her easily in the dark. The dark tunnels were out.  
That left option 3: Barge into the castle, vanquish whatever evil was cooped up within, if any, and hope to either find an exit or find a clearly labeled "teleport inhibitor" type device and smash it. She didn't much like this plan either, as she didn't like the idea of facing a mysterious new enemy all alone if there was one, but it didn't look like she had much of a choice.

Walking up to the gate, she stabbed the main doors with her glaive before shifting it into a clean circle, slicing a hole in the metal doors big enough for her to step through. Withdrawing her glaive, she flipped it around in her hands before smashing the butt of the weapon into the severed circle of metal, knocking that section out of the barrier and onto the floor.  
_Thunk!_  
Peeking through the hole, Saturn could see only dusty stone hallways with strange-looking engravings on the walls. No enemies to speak of.  
"You didn't have to slice up the doors, you know," came a voice from behind her.  
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!"

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Usagi skipped happily up the stairs of the DAPC headquarters, her long blonde ponytails fluttering behind her as she moved. She was here! After the previous day's attempt to get to the police station had been delayed due to evil, she had spent the rest of the evening convincing her friends that, no, she was NOT dating the hunky young police officer that had now rescued her twice from the steel clutches of a cybernetic menace.  
Despite Mamoru practically leaving her, Usagi had decided to remain loyal to him. He hadn't actually ended their relationship this time after all; he had just implied that he didn't think of her in her cyborg persona as the same person that he had fallen in love with. That didn't mean they were through. Heck, he had even come to the rescue in the last battle just like always.  
So Usagi simply considered this a "break" in their relationship like before that would eventually end with Mamoru running back into her arms like all the times previous. It would just take a little time until he either got used to the idea of her being a cyborg, or until she could find out whether or not she could reverse the process.  
She had to admit though, the idea of turning back into a human - albeit a superpowered, near-immortal human - wasn't as simple as it was at first anymore. Every time she thought about the topic recently, she couldn't help but consider the possibility seriously and rationally, weighing the advantages of her new strengths and conveniences against the advantages of her Senshi form. That fact kind of frightened her; was she losing sight of her humanity? She was never given the choice to exchange her former life and powers for a cyborg body, and was converted as part of a kidnapping. Wasn't that reason enough to want a reversal?  
Usagi shook her head once she realized she was thinking seriously about that issue again, and as a consequence staring into space right in front of the HQ doors.

"Hello! Anybody here?"  
Asuka looked up from her desk and nearly choked. "S-Sakura?! What are you doing back?"  
Usagi turned to look at the blue-haired woman, clearly confused.  
Asuka shook her head. "Oh, s-sorry. It's just... Sorry." She tried to compose herself as she looked the girl over, trying to reconcile the momentary confusion. This new girl didn't really look all that much like Sakura, despite the same hair color. It was just a sudden feeling that Asuka got when she had first glanced at the girl. She just seemed to exude... incompetence. Cheerful, bouncy, impenetrable incompetence. Over her career the police captain had become quite sensitive to it.  
Clearing her throat, Asuka rose from her desk. "My name is Asuka Takami, Captain of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment. And you are?"  
"Usagi Tsukino," she said, bowing deeply. "Nice to meet you. You're Ami-chan's cousin, right?"  
Asuka blinked. "Yes. How do you..." then she frowned. "Hold on a sec." Turning to the computer on her left, the police captain quickly clicked through several files, and her eyebrow rose when she found the correct one. "Thought that name sounded familiar. So you're the famous Sailor Moon."  
Usagi blanched, her face reddening. "Uh-oh... is my cover totally blown now?"  
"Nah," Asuka mumbled, turning away from her PC and waving her hand dismissively. "The classified archive is encrypted, and nobody peruses our files anyway. They're too much like a Saturday morning cartoon lineup. And the press is more interested in the damage we do to the city than the forces we're sent to investigate. Jerks," she muttered irritably.  
"So I'm not going to be kidnapped and taken apart like some lab experiment?"  
"Of course not," Asuka said, waving off the comment. Then she stopped to consider Ranma's report on the girl. "... At least, not by the government. What exactly brings you here, Tsukino-san?"  
Usagi composed herself and then sat down in front of Asuka's desk. "Well, I was wondering if you had any information on a terrorist group known as the Freedom's Angels."  
"More information than any decent person should have to know," the bluette assured her. "What's the topic?"  
Usagi blinked, surprised that it was so easy. "Well, it's a bit complicated. You see, I think they may have been involved in turning me into a cyborg." A small part of her mind marveled at how easy it was all of a sudden to talk about such a bizarre issue. It was like she had fallen into the Twilight Zone, only to decide it felt it like home.  
The blue-haired woman raised an eyebrow at her. "You 'think'? You're not sure?"  
Usagi blushed slightly. "Well... no. I've never dealt with this sort of thing before."  
"Fair enough," Asuka allowed. "Anyway, I can assure you that in all likelihood, yes, the Freedom's Angels were responsible for your conversion. Exhibit A:" She turned around her computer screen, showing the image of a robot with a huge, charred hole in its chest. "The opposition. Most of what we faced back at that scrap yard was an older generation of FA cybernetic soldiers. This here is probably the toughest of the lot, such that it's still used alongside newer models. It's a Devastator-class boomer." She hit a key on her keyboard, and the image shifted to the four-legged behemoth that had blown up next to Sailor Mars. "Black Sabre-class artillery boomer." _Click!_ "Mk. I combat androids."  
Then she hit another key. "Exhibit B: The presence of not one, but TWO Angel cybernetic superweapons. First is the defense drone from an alien ship. Since encountering it in the scrap yard, it's obvious that the Angels retrofitted it and managed to reactivate it after they stole it. Second is Shin-Alpha."  
Usagi gasped as she recognized the redheaded android now being displayed on the screen. "Hey! She's that girl who kidnapped me!"  
Asuka nodded. "It figures. This is a Freedom's Angels special forces android, code-named Shin-Alpha. It boasts roughly ten times the combat prowess and energy output as a Mk. III, along with an array of gadgets to aid in surgical strikes, assassinations, and apparently the kidnapping of prominent superheroines."  
The blonde girl fumed as she glared at the picture on the monitor. 'Well, she'll get hers the next time we meet! I'll make sure of that!'  
"As you can see," Asuka continued, "given the evidence, either the Freedom's Angels kidnapped you, or someone who mysteriously has access to most of their resources did." Then she pursed her lips. "The problem, of course, is that we're a bit suspicious of why they went through all that trouble to make you, and then left you behind. When we got to that lab within the bunker, it had been evacuated."  
Usagi blinked. "What? They left without me?"  
Asuka nodded as she leaned back and crossed her legs. "Yes. And that presents us with two unfortunate and uncomfortable conclusions. A: Through sheer ineptitude or luck, you slipped through their fingers, and they'll probably make a powerful effort to recover you so that they can use you as a soldier like Shin-Alpha. Or B: There's a program or system within your mind waiting for some sort of trigger, and upon receiving it you'll be under complete enemy control."  
The cyborg's eyes widened. "But... But I don't wanna work for terrorists!"  
"And we don't want you working for terrorists either," Asuka deadpanned. "We're giving you the benefit of the doubt in allowing you to run around without a restriction code, but make no mistake; if you go rogue, we'll put you down. Got it?"  
Usagi winced. "G-Got it..."  
The tension in the room quickly dropped once Asuka got past that point. "So that's the story from our end. As far as we know, you're an escaped terrorist weapon."  
The blonde cyborg mulled over that idea for a few moments, finding it rather humbling and uncomfortable. She was supposed to be the reincarnation of an ancient queen, destined ruler of the planet Earth, and wielder of an exceptionally powerful magic artifact. She decided that the job title "terrorist weapon" was pretty poor by comparison.  
"Well... we were hoping we could track down the people who did this and see if they could reverse the process. Do you think you could help?" Usagi asked with a little more determination than before. Dealing with the DAPC **was** a little scary, but at the end of the day they were both on the same side. Why be timid about it?  
Asuka rubbed her chin. "Well, my area of expertise is in breaking cyborgs, not building them. So I can't really judge if what you're trying to do is possible, but it sure SOUNDS like a longshot." Leaning back, she lowered her head, deep in thought. "Unfortunately, we only have one useful lead on the source of the Angels' technology. Then again, his specialty is robotics and cybernetics, so it's a decent bet." She looked up. "Judging from Saotome's combat report, you've met General Igov Yuchtzky, haven't you?"  
Usagi winced, and then nodded. "Yeah... he's pretty tough."  
"'Pretty tough,' is a fairly insulting appraisal of his abilities," Asuka deadpanned. "The man's a juggernaut. A smart one, too. He's also a cyborg, though his augmentations are more obvious. You're clearly different from the normal cyborg fare he works with, but it was probably his technology that made you."  
The blonde nodded. "Where can I find him?"  
"Well, that IS the million-dollar question," Asuka mused. "No one in the Freedom's Angels worth hunting down remains in one place for long, or makes their base public." Then she frowned. "Well, except for that bitch Tokima. But she barely knows a socket wrench from a screwdriver, and so far she's proven legally bulletproof."  
Usagi began to sigh in depression before the last part of Asuka's statement penetrated. "Wait a minute... the Senshi don't need a warrant or anything to attack a bad guy, right?"  
To any "normal" police officer, this question would have been alarming at best, and outrageous at worst. Asuka, however, was used to violations of law and procedure by her own officers that made vigilantism seem perfectly timid and reasonable, and had no illusions about the certainty of Alexandra's guilt.  
"No, you don't, but I still wouldn't recommend an attack on her," the police captain drawled. "Alexandra isn't a near-invincible cyborg or anything of the sort, but she's rather crafty in her own way, and twice as cruel and ruthless as Yuchtzky can ever hope to be." She sighed. "In addition, she commands a good segment of the Angels' forces, and you don't even know if she has any useful information, much less if she'd tell you anything even on death's door."  
Usagi looked a bit unsure of herself, but nodded anyway. "We have to try. Please, tell me where I can find her."  
The blue-haired woman shrugged and turned her computer monitor back around. "We don't know where her permanent address is, or if she has one anymore, but she's the President of Wraith Laboratories, an organization that funds and supplies at least SOME of the Angels' operations here in Japan. They're nearly impossible to break down due to extensive international business support that lets them get their claws deep into the central government. As an organization it's far beyond the power of a mere police force to exert significant pressure to threaten their power structure. However, if a few buildings suddenly fell down and some executives went missing, they're more likely to just pick themselves up and rebuild rather than seek any governmental intervention."  
Usagi blinked. "Even if their president vanished?"  
"Tokima may be a brilliant economist, businesswoman, and at times a decent tactician," Asuka deadpanned, "but she's still just one of a thousand sadistic loons chafing for power. If she goes up in smoke, the Freedom's Angels will waste no time in sweeping up the dust and setting up a new puppet. That's how they operate."  
Then she scratched her chin. "Come to think of it, it would be acceptable to assign someone to help you."  
"It would?"  
Asuka nodded. "Sure. As an escaped superweapon, our primary concern is keeping you out of terrorist hands. That may be difficult to do, what with you running right into their arms like this." Ignoring the cyborg's embarrassed flush, she continued. "We're a bit strapped for manpower because we're investigating some kind of undead threat right now, but I can spare one man and call him back when we need him for a major operation." She shrugged. "So I can give you a bodyguard. Whoever you want."  
Usagi nodded happily. Not only had this trip turned out to be quite productive, but they were even getting help! "Can I meet your officers before I decide?" Naturally, she already had an officer in mind, but thought it would be best to at least meet the others before deciding.  
"No problem," the police captain said, walking out from behind her desk and leading Usagi across the lobby. "They're in the tactical room right now having a meeti-"

_BAM!_ The women jumped in surprise as the door to the meeting room suddenly burst open, and Snake stepped out before spreading his arms magnificently.  
"Hear ye, hear ye!" The American shouted, "It is the decision of this council that in the instance of case 512: Negi Springfield versus Harry Potter in Deadly Combat, Negi would totally kick Potter's ass!"  
Usagi stared, a large sweatdrop rolling down her head. Asuka merely hung her head as the image of professionalism and sensibility she had maintained so far completely shattered.  
"Is... THAT... what you're all doing in there?" Asuka said quietly, her shoulders shaking as she ruthlessly suppressed violent urges.  
"Yes," Snake said simply, idly wondering who the blonde was but not caring enough to ask. "The council shall now reconvene to - once and for all! - determine the sexual orientation of the characters from Naruto!" Without another word, Snake turned back around, slamming the door behind him.  
Usagi's sweatdrop grew bigger.  
Asuka turned toward her. "If you want to flee now, I'll understand."  
"Er... no, that's okay," Usagi reassured her. "Actually, I've been wondering about Sasuke and Naruto for a while now."  
"That's... great," the bluette mumbled as she trudged back to her desk. "I'm so glad you find this helpful. I'm just going to go back to my little pit of sanity and cry, now."  
"Have fun!" The cyborg said far too cheerfully for the captain's liking. Then she opened up the door to the tactical room and slipped inside.

"And so it is the FINAL decision of this court," Snake shouted imperiously from the podium at the head of the room, "that Naruto, given his constant and frequent attention to the female gender, his hideous fashion sense, as well as being surprisingly pudgy given his career as a fighter, is clearly, obviously, and completely straight."  
_Wham!_ Junko slammed her hand onto the table as she stood up. "Objection!"  
"Overruled!" The weapons expert said immediately, glaring down at the redhead. "The yaoi fangirl section of the council will have to be content with Sasuke and maybe the tongue guy."  
"Damn!" Junko cursed, planting a fist knuckle-down on the table. "Then my section calls for the additional pairing of Kakashi and Iruka!"  
"Hey! I like Kakashi!" Tiro complained.  
"Noted," Snake said. "The council is called upon to judge Kakashi's desire for women! First, does anybody important care about this character?"  
"HEY!" Tiro shouted. He was ignored as Ranma, Kyle, and Seras all shook their heads.  
"Very well! The floor accepts the Kakashi/Iruka pairing, but only on the grounds that the yaoi fangirls keep their dirty claws off of Shino!" Snake demanded, pointing a gavel at Junko.  
"The yaoi fangirl sector accepts these terms!" Junko said happily. Then she held up a stack of papers. "At least HALF my fanart is still valid. Who wants to see?"  
The men all immediately averted their eyes, causing the promiscuous woman to pout and slump into her chair. "Philistines..."  
Then she jumped slightly as an unfamiliar blonde woman seemed to nearly materialize next to her. "Can I see them? Can I? Please?"  
"The council does not recognize the newcomer!" Snake said suddenly, pointing his gavel at her. "Guards! Seize her!"  
"Oh, would you calm down? We don't have any guards." Ranma mumbled. "Usagi-chan, what're you doing here?"  
The blonde cyborg blushed heavily and looked up from Junko's drawings. The redhead wasn't the best artist in the world, but seemed to have quite a bit of talent for erotic images. "Oh! Ranma-kun! Hi!" She hesitantly looked around at all the officers who were staring at her. "So... is this what you guys do all day?"  
"Well, on Wednesdays, sure," the pigtailed man admitted. "Something wrong? What brings you by?"  
"Saotome!" Snake said irritably, banging his gavel a few times. "Who is this?"  
"Just chill, wouldja?" Ranma snapped. "This is Usagi Tsukino, the cyborg girl from that Senshi op the other day."  
Junko raised an eyebrow. "Cyborg girl?" Looking the blonde over, she did little to hide her skepticism. All the cyborgs she had seen before came complete with chunky, obviously mechanical parts poking out of their bodies. This girl didn't look any different from your everyday college student. Well, other than her hairstyle.  
Snake, despite Ranma's protests, wasn't about to relinquish the (mostly imaginary) power as chairman of the Council (as they really didn't focus on any one subject or do anything productive, they had merely named this particular activity "The Council"). He pounded the gavel a few more times. "The council demands proof of the newcomer's cybernetic nature!"  
Usagi blinked, and flushed as she rubbed the back of her head. "Uh, well... okay..." She frowned as she tried to think of something to do. Of course, she could always just pop out her sensor fins or turn her index finger into a lighter, but she wanted to make a special impression here...  
She brightened as she thought of something, and began to lift up her shirt.  
"Whoo! Take it off!" Tiro suddenly shouted. Ranma immediately grabbed the back of his head and slammed his forehead into the table surface.  
"Sorry about that. Go ahead," he said encouragingly.  
Still blushing a bit, Usagi patted her stomach.  
_Pssshoot!_ Cold air burst out of the girl's abdomen as a square section of her stomach opened up to reveal a mini-fridge. "Here! Who wants a..." She blinked as she looked down at one of the bottles withdrawn from inside her. "A beer?" That was odd. She had stocked herself with soda. Where had this come from?

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Luna raised an eyebrow as she saw Ami gathering up her things in preparation to go out, mumbling the whole time about inconsiderate friends running off with her stash or somesuch nonsense. "Ami? Is there something wrong?"  
"No, no," the blue-haired girl said, though anyone who knew her could immediately tell that she was uncharacteristically agitated. "I just have to go to the store for a while."  
"Didn't you just go yesterday?" Luna asked worriedly. The dorm roommates had learned to accommodate Usagi's appetite, so the only reason that she would devour their entire grocery supply would be a breakup-induced eating binge.  
"Yeah. I'll be back in a bit," Ami mumbled as her eye twitched. 'Of course, I'm SUPPOSED to be tutoring Usagi right now so that she doesn't get thrown out of college. "What the heck?" I figured, "If we're going to be together all day, might as well stock her shelves for her, right?"' That the stocking replaced other beverages, and that it happened at night when Usagi was unaware hardly seemed important. 'Just where IS Usagi, anyway?'

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Shrugging, the blonde cyborg started placing bottles of beer on the table. "Sorry, I guess this is all I have."  
_Bang! Bang!_ Went Snake's gavel. "It is the unanimous decision of this court that Tsukino-san is obviously the best cyborg ever. All rise for pointless enthusiastic cheering!"  
"Yahoo!" The other officers whooped before grabbing the beers greedily (except Ranma, who gave the required shout before moving over next to Usagi).  
"So what is it you're here for?" Ranma asked, genuinely curious.  
"Oh! Uh..." Usagi shook her head suddenly - she had been wondering about what exactly it meant to be the "best cyborg ever." Who was her competition, exactly? - before she responded. "Well, it's sort of complicated, but someone here is supposed to help me and the Sailor Senshi capture a terrorist leader called Alexandra Tokima and interrogate her."  
Everybody stopped drinking and turned to stare at her.  
Well, except for Tiro, who dashed over and slid to a stop on his knees as he pressed his hands together. "PLEASE! Please pick me! I wanna work with the Senshi! I'll do anything!"  
Usagi looked surprised by the request, while Ranma snorted. "Right. And what're you gonna do to help 'em out? You'll be so busy staring up their skirts you won't even notice when the shooting starts."  
Before Tiro could offer any denial of the frankly undeniably likely prediction, Junko spoke up. "You know, that's actually not such a bad idea. Tiro could definitely find Tokima more easily than any of us, and may be able to negotiate the information out of her without having to resort to an interrogation."  
Kyle nodded as he rubbed his chin. "Yeah... but he's still useless in a fight."  
"So? As I understand it the Senshi have plenty of fighting power," Junko explained.  
"Oh really? So much that you managed to arrest them after a single warning shot?" Snake drawled.  
Tiro frowned. "Hey now, that's unfair. It's not like they wanted to fight the police."  
"Yeah!" Usagi huffed, standing up tall and glaring at the American. "Plus, you know, you had a tank."  
"Point taken," Snake said. "So what's it gonna be?" He pointed his gavel at Tiro. "Connections?" He then pointed his gavel at Kyle. "Power?" He gestured to himself. "Explosives?" Junko was next. "Homicidal, nymphomaniacal frenzy?"  
Junko groaned and massaged her head as Usagi gave her a suddenly wary look.  
Finally, Snake pointed the gavel at Ranma. "Or will you take the obvious choice: stealth, skill, and cunning?"  
The blonde looked around the table, eventually meeting eyes with Ranma. 'Hmmm... let's see here.' Activating her scanners, her eyes made another circuit around the table.  
+Target: Yamazaki, Tiro.  
Rank: Cadet.  
Species: human.  
Class: decoy grade B.  
Weapon specialization: sniper rifles, anti-tank rifles, any other weapons that can be fired from extremely long range or from hiding.  
Special abilities: unusually sensitive to the presence of women. Has an almost precognitive sense of self-preservation that allows him to evade threats to his life.  
Weakness: breasts.+  
+Target: Tekai, Kyle.  
Rank: Lieutenant Commander.  
Species: human modified.  
Class: assault soldier grade B.  
Weapon specialization: heavy weapons of all types; carries his own mobile armory into battle.  
Special abilities: genetic enhancements allow Kyle to lift an estimated twenty metric tons, as well as withstand multiple powerful impacts with minimal damage. He is also able to regenerate damage at a superhuman rate, including replacement and regeneration of normally irreplaceable cells. He is also known for his intellect, or rather lack thereof.  
Weakness: math.+  
+Target: Yakata, Ken.  
Codename: Snake.  
Rank: Lieutenant.  
Species: human.  
Class: commando grade S.  
Weapons specialization: all modern ballistic, missile, and explosive weapons.  
Special abilities: none, if one doesn't consider his uncanny ability to place explosives without anyone ever noticing superhuman. Snake's finely honed skills, extensive experience, and expert marksmanship doesn't seem to surpass anything considered strictly "human," yet the man continues to emerge from engagements unscathed where entire squads of other men would have swiftly perished.  
Weakness: hippies, peace.+  
+Target: Tuko, Seras.  
Rank: N/A.  
Species: human modified (scans suggest clone with minor splicing).  
Class: mad doctor grade S.  
Specialization: robotics.  
Special abilities: as all "mad doc" classes, Seras possesses knowledge of technologies that not only far outstrip those commonly available to the world in general, but have somehow been developed and perfected without any obvious extensive documentation or really any respect for the scientific method. Seras' talents, unlike those of his peers, are frequently buried under his constant haze of inebriation.  
Weakness: alcohol.+  
+Target: Chikiko, Junko.  
Rank: Cadet.  
Species: human.  
Class: psychic grade A.  
Weapons specialization: knives.  
Special abilities: when suffering significant cranial trauma, Junko's normally locked psychic potential surfaces in the form of alternate personality Akina. In this state she is capable of projecting powerful short-range kinetic bursts as well as empathetic projections that are devastating to living opponents, particularly humans. In contrast, her skills are remarkably ineffective against machines.  
Weakness: lesbians.+  
+Target: Saotome, Ranma.  
Rank: Cadet.  
Species: human.  
Class: adept grade S.  
Weapons: 13 mm. Jackal, monomolecular-edged kodachi.  
Special abilities: a respectable library of exotic martial arts techniques, including a cloaking field and energy blasts. Has precision and speed to evade and even catch bullets, and the strength to break mechanical soldiers with bare hands. Also known for incredible adaptability in the face of overwhelming force.  
Weakness: crying girls, cats.+  
"Well... Ranma-kun? Would you help us?" She was a bit worried about him having cats as a weakness, but she was sure they could work around it. Surely he wouldn't freak out if he was just AROUND a cat, right?  
The pigtailed man didn't say anything, but smirked and gave her a salute.  
"Wow. I totally didn't see that coming," Snake deadpanned. Then he banged his gavel on the desk. "This session of the council has been concluded. As the final order of business, Lieutenant Tekai shall be tasked with dragging away Officer Yamazaki somewhere where he can finish crying like a little girl without the rest of us having to hear him."  
Kyle stood up and saluted, obviously forgetting that he was Snake's superior. "Sir!" Then he grabbed Tiro, who had curled up in the fetal position, and lifted him up like a box of packing peanuts before hauling him out the door.  
"Why? _Sob!_ Why is it always Ranma?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A minute later Seras had left for his lab, and Junko had left saying that she was going "hunting." Usagi remained with Ranma and Snake.  
"So even if we sort of know where the enemy is, we don't really know where to start," the blonde murmured, rubbing her chin. "We're not used to attacking ordinary people, you know?"  
"Yeah, I can see that," Ranma murmured. "Well, the best idea here would be to decide on the most simple and safe strategy right away before Snake gets the chance to come up with his own plan."  
The American, who had been staring up at the ceiling deep in thought, suddenly snapped his fingers.  
"Too late," Ranma sighed regretfully. "And here I was hoping to get through this mission without getting set on fire..."  
"No, no, no! Hear me out!" Snake insisted. "In this plan you get to stay outside the fire!" Then he turned to Usagi. "Look, it's really simple. We choose a Wraith facility at random, and you infiltrate it. All you have to do is make yourself look more... cyborgy. You'll bring in one of the ghouls we have upstairs into the entrance where they take in all the spooky bioweapon crap they're always shipping around. As you'll be clearly identifiable as a cyborg, and you'll have a twitching, moaning corpse with you, nobody will be inclined to think you're anything but an Angel weapon that they haven't seen before. Just take the ghoul into the subject storage area and tell them that you need to present the specimen to General Tokima. We can get her location then and there."  
"Wait a minute," Ranma said suddenly. "There's something very wrong with this plan, considering it came from you." He frowned as he went over the idea as it was presented. "There's no bomb involved!" He said suddenly.  
"Of course there's a bomb involved," Snake said condescendingly. "I'm going to plant it in the zombie."  
"And when were you planning on mentioning that?" Ranma deadpanned.  
"After it exploded, of course. When planning a mission, confidentiality is key! We can't divulge any facts unless it's absolutely necessary," Snake said, rolling his eyes.  
Usagi frowned as she rubbed her head. "Huh... I think he has a point."  
"No he doesn't," Ranma assured her. "He's always pulling stuff like this."  
"What do you care? Like I said, you won't be anywhere near the bomb."  
Ranma glared at the American. "And what about Usagi?"  
"I'm sure a cyborg of her quality is able to handle a little inconvenience like being in the blast zone of a high-yield thermite explosive," Snake insisted.  
As would be expected, Usagi was quite doubtful. "What's thermite?" She whispered in Ranma's ear.  
"It's kind of like lava, except that instead of coming from the ground, it comes from Snake," he responded.  
Snake saw the blonde woman quail at that and rolled his eyes. "Fine, be a big sissy about it," he muttered irritably, going back to his podium and opening up a manga.

"Maybe we should come up with something else. It's going to be dangerous enough without bombs," Usagi ventured.  
"Yeah I think I'll run this by Asuka later. She comes up with all the really good plans." Ranma didn't like to admit it, but he knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, at least when it didn't come to one-on-one martial arts battles. That Usagi seemed a bit dimmer than himself might've been a comfort, except that she was apparently the leader of the Senshi and he was supposed to help them attack one of the most dangerous terrorist forces in the world. "Was there anything else you needed?"  
"No, I guess not," the cyborg said reluctantly. "So I guess now I have to go back to school and study."  
"Yeah, college is a pain in the ass," Snake said from his podium, "That's why I joined the army out of high school. The stuff you learn is just as useful, and THEY pay YOU."  
Ranma cocked his head to one side. "So what are you studying?"  
"Hmm... history and English," she mumbled in annoyance. "And then there's my P.E. grade too, though I won't really be 'studying' in that case."  
"Sure ya can," Ranma said suddenly, patting her on the back. "I can help ya study for gym."  
"What? How? We're not taking a written test or anything, we're just playing soccer," Usagi explained.  
"Martial arts soccer, got it," Ranma murmured. Usagi was about to correct him in that martial arts wasn't a part of it, but Ranma continued before she could. "You can do plenty to study for that. Well, we don't really call it studying, of course. We call it training. But the concept is the same. I can turn ya into a soccer star in just a coupla days."  
The cyborg cocked her head to one side. "Really? Soccer training?"  
"Sure, why not?" Snake said, putting down his manga. "For that matter, I could teach you history, no problem."  
Ranma made a face. "What do YOU know about history?"  
"What're you, kidding me?" The American boasted, jabbing a thumb at himself. "Nobody knows history like I do!"  
"... Does that mean the same thing as 'nobody knows history **better** than I do?'" Ranma wondered, only to be completely ignored by both Usagi and Snake.  
Usagi clasped her hands together in front of her, eyes shining brightly as she stared up at the lieutenant. "You mean it? You'd really tutor me?"  
"Sure. Not like I have anything better to do between firefights," the American said as he leaned back. "Besides, it's about damn time today's youth got a decent history lesson rather than the nationalistic drivel taught in Japanese public schools!"  
"Uh huh. Usagi-chan, you sure you want to do this?" Ranma asked doubtfully, giving Snake a suspicious stare.  
"I have to take all the help I can get," the cyborg insisted, gripping her hand into a fist and looking determined. "Ranma-san, Snake-san, please! Help me study!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Makoto sweatdropped as she glanced up at the arcade. "I'm not sure if this is really the time for this... shouldn't we go find Usagi?" She asked the shorter blue-haired woman next to her.  
Ami shrugged. "Why bother? She told Luna she'd be at the DAPC headquarters, possibly all day. Unless we get an emergency signal from her, we have no reason to assume anything went wrong."  
The brunette frowned. "From your description of the place, I'm not sure it's safe to leave her there alone. At the very least Luna should have gone with her."  
"Meh. She'll be fine. As long as she doesn't piss off the big man-eating alien, anyway," the bluette insisted as she moved through the arcade entrance, stumbling slightly when the door offered more resistance than she'd guessed.  
Makoto's eyes narrowed. "Are you drunk?"  
"Of couse not! No! No... Nah. Not that much. Maybe a little." Successfully making it past the front door, Ami scanned the interior of the gaming complex, searching for an open console. "Oh! They have the new Time Crisis!" She said happily, walking toward the machine while swaying back and forth unsteadily.  
"Oh, for goodness sake..." Makoto mumbled, rubbing her forehead. Inwardly, she seriously considered what she could and should be doing to help Usagi through her latest troubles and get back on track, but honestly she wasn't sure exactly what the "track" was anymore. Being cybernetically converted and accosted by alien/demon slayers just seemed to change all the rules, and while she didn't like it, she doubted that stalking into the belly of the beast would prevent more trouble than it would cause.  
'If there's one thing Usagi is good at, it's making friends. I'm sure the cops wouldn't hurt her,' she thought to herself as she too scanned the arcade interior.  
When she caught her gaze lingering on the bar, she had to admit that she wasn't even fooling herself. 'Screw it. Ami has the right idea.' Fishing out her wallet, she found a stool and settled in.

Ami gave a polite smile to the man playing the game at the right side of the two-man platform, and inserted her money. As the screen displayed the option for single or linked play, she snuck a glance at the fellow next to her, sizing him up.  
He was rather tall for a Japanese man, though his long blonde hair indicated that he might not be totally Japanese. Then again, Usagi and Minako were both Japanese and blonde, so maybe it wasn't nearly so uncommon nowadays as most would guess.  
Watching him for a moment, she couldn't help but notice the expertise with which he handled the gun, firing in a very precise, deliberate manner that she had never seen from a gamer.  
After a few more seconds, she realized what was so different in his firing style: he was unconsciously adjusting his hands for recoil, despite there not being any. This man was no gamer; he was an actual gunman!  
Being curious, she selected linked play and began, taking control of her character and joining the fight.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sailor Saturn backed away frantically as she hugged her glaive to her chest, almost stumbling over the rocky, uneven ground. "Wh-Wh-What are y-you?" She shouted, leveling her glaive at it.  
Standing between the Senshi of Silence and the expansive chasm was a glowing, semi-transparent figure with its hands clasped behind its back. Upon further inspection, it appeared to be an old man with short, swept-back hair and a neatly trimmed beard standing before her in a plain gray tunic. "What am I? Do you mean what am I now, or what was I in life?"  
"Gh-Ghost!" Saturn squeaked, stepping forward and swinging her glaive through the figure's chest. Predictably, the blade passed right through the image without apparent effect, although the apparition flinched from the attack.  
"Hey now, stop that! That stings!" The spectre snapped. "Stupid aura weapons... put that damn thing away before you hurt somebody!"  
Sailor Saturn recoiled as the spirit lectured her, sorely wishing she had some way of contacting the other Senshi. Rei probably had experience banishing ghosts, but she didn't know the first thing about fighting spirits. "Wh-What do you w-want? Go away!"  
The spectre snorted. "What I want... is YOU!" He shouted suddenly, his eyes glowing a bright, bloody red as his voice boomed.  
Saturn jumped back at the exclamation, scrambling for the door she had cut a hole into.  
"Kidding! Just kidding!" The man said, chuckling as he suddenly appeared in front of her.  
Saturn recoiled again and fell down on her bottom, clutching her glaive desperately. "D-Don't do that!"  
The apparition shrugged. "Why not? Just a harmless bit of fun. I don't get many visitors, so I have to take advantage of it when I get some."  
"No, you don't!" Saturn growled, standing up. "Now seriously! What do you want?"  
"Well, I want to talk to you, obviously," the spectre drawled. "Like I said, I have to take advantage. Conversation is hard to come by when you're dead."  
Saturn looked at the spirit distrustfully. "You just want to talk?"  
"Well, I can't very well do much MORE, now can I?" The spectre said irritably. "So yes, I want to talk. For the first topic, I suggest my home. Which reminds me: please don't cut holes into it."  
"What does it matter to you, if you're dead?" Saturn asked dubiously.  
The spirit glared at her. "It just does! Aren't you Japanese supposed to respect and honor the dead?"  
The Senshi of Destruction shrugged. "After I found out that some of the dead actually reincarnate thousands of years into the future and bring wars that were over eons ago with them, it didn't seem nearly as important."  
"I see..." the spectre calmed considerably at this statement. "Reincarnate thousands of years into the future, you say? That sounds interesting. Let's talk about that." Then he gestured toward the hole she had carved in the front door of the fortress. "Come inside, please. The furniture is a bit dusty after several hundred years, but it's more comfortable than standing out here."  
Saturn looked at the door suspiciously, then glanced at the caves on the other side of the cavern. Taking her eyes off the spectre, she didn't notice his eyes narrow in irritation at her indecision.  
"Well... I guess I can spend a little bit of time here. And it would be best to have a guide around the fortress."  
"A guide. Sure. Now move it. Hurry!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ami put down the plastic gun as the final boss went down, prompting the usual comparison of points for both players. The results were... unfavorable. For her. Her partner was a VERY good shot.  
Glancing to the side, she saw that the blonde man wasn't paying attention to the scoreboard at all, but was staring at a point on the floor for some reason.  
Deciding to take the initiative and start a conversation, she coughed gently into her hand before speaking. "You're pretty good at this game. Do you practice using actual firearms?" She had already deduced the answer, of course, but it was an interesting enough conversation-starter.  
"Hm? Oh, yeah, I do," he answered distractedly, barely glancing away from the spot on the carpet. "I'm a cop. So I get a lot of practice shooting terrorists."  
"Really? You see a lot of actual combat?" Ami asked.  
He nodded, still staring away from her. "All the time. Though fighting actual terrorists is a little harder than this."  
Ami chuckled slightly. "I imagine so... uh..." she cleared her throat gently. "What are you staring at?"  
The blonde man pointed toward the point on the carpet that held his attention. "There's this patch of light that keeps appearing and disappearing right here! I think it might be some sort of code!"  
Ami took one glance at what he was talking about and laughed out loud. "Th-That's so silly!" She said, chuckling and holding a hand over her mouth. "That's the light from the high windows filtering through the ceiling fan!"  
The man looked up. Then he looked back down. "Ah. I see. I knew that." Then he turned around finally, taking a good look at the short-haired woman speaking to him.  
Ami smiled and bowed. "I'm Mizuno Ami. Nice to meet you."  
"My name's Tekai Kyle, Lieutenant Commander of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment. Nice to meet you too."  
Seeing the bluette's tension rise instantly, Kyle sweatdropped. "Ah. I see you've heard of us."  
"Oh, well... you know... a little," Ami squeaked, desperately trying to calm herself down. "It's strange, though. I've run into their officers a few times, but I've never seen you before."  
"Really? Why would you run into our officers?" The blond man asked. "You're not a mutant or a cultist or anything, are you?"  
Technically, she fit neatly into the "anything" category, but obviously she couldn't tell him that straight out of the blue.  
"No, no. My cousin actually works there as a police captain," Ami explained, chuckling nervously.  
Kyle recoiled as if slapped. "Y-You're Captain Takami's cousin? Seriously?"  
"Uh... yes. Why do you find that so surprising?" the bluette asked, sweatdropping.  
"Oh! Well, whenever we ask the captain about her family, she always freaks out and changes the subject. I always figured all her relatives were dead or something," Kyle said bluntly, scratching his head.  
Another sweatdrop joined the first. "Ah. Well... I'm sure she has her reasons..." Ami couldn't say that she knew what it was like having criminals for parents, as her own were both quite respectably employed, but she could easily imagine that Asuka would want to be associated with them as little as possible, especially around other police officers.  
"Huh... Asuka's cousin..." Kyle rolled that thought around in his head for a moment.  
Ami frowned and glanced from side to side. 'What's that noise? It sounds like someone bouncing a pebble inside an empty trash can.'  
"Wow, you must be really smart!" He finally said, looking Ami over appraisingly.  
She blinked. "Well, yes. I mean, that's what people tell me, anyway," she stuttered slightly, her natural shyness provoking her modesty. "Why did that occur to you, of all things?"  
The blonde man smiled as he moved over to a nearby table and took a seat. "I guess it's just what I think of when I think of the captain. She's always berating us for acting like idiots and coming up with actual workable plans... I guess that's why she's in charge, really. She's way smarter than anyone else I work with."  
Ami took the seat across from him. "Well, there must be SOMEONE else in your department of noteworthy intelligence."  
"Not a one," the blonde man said somberly. "It makes me feel bad sometimes, you know? But what am I gonna do about it? I'm just an idiot."  
"Hey now, don't say that," Ami chided, a bit alarmed by the way Kyle had said it so casually, as if it was an obvious truth.  
"No, really, I totally am," Kyle assured her. "Once, an evil scientist knocked me out cold by asking me a word problem."  
Ami's face darkened at that. "Huh. You don't say?"  
"Yeah. It was kind of embarrassing," the blond man mumbled. "I didn't even remember that I wasn't taking a test until later. If I'd known that, I probably wouldn't have fainted."  
Her face darkened further. "R-Really?" 'Wow. Maybe he IS an idiot,' she thought to herself. Having Usagi and Minako for friends had forced her to lower her standards significantly toward what she considered to be truly "stupid," but if this fellow wasn't exaggerating, he may just fit the bill.  
She was mulling the idea over in her head (with a lot less noise than her companion), when something about Kyle's story came to the forefront of her mind. "Wait. An 'evil scientist' knocked you out?"  
"Well, he's actually our medical officer, but he was sober at the time," Kyle explained.  
"Medical officer... Seras Tuko?" Ami asked. "That drunk who was experimenting on the zombies in your lab? He's an evil scientist?"  
"Only when he's sober," Kyle reiterated. "Which isn't often."  
Ami frowned and scratched her head. "I... uh..." Then she leaned forward. "So, can you expand on that a little? It sounds interesting."  
"Oh, sure!" The blond said brightly. "It all started a few months ago when I was suffering from chemical-based sublimy... sublinan... well, I had voices in my head. And Seras was supposed to fix it. Asuka didn't want him doing brain surgery drunk though, and cut off his access to alcohol before he started."  
Ami was silent for a few long moments. "Wait... you were schitzophrenic and your medical officer was supposed to repair it via surgery? Is that even possible?"  
"Hold on, lemme check," Kyle said seriously, sitting back suddenly. Then he poked himself in the side of the head. "Yo! Anybody in there? Got any evil missions for me today? Want me to assassinate my boss or plant explosives in my friends' cars? Anything? Helloooo?" As Ami blinked repeatedly, he shrugged. "I got nothing. So I guess the answer is yes."  
The blonde man grew slightly concerned as his new acquaintance closed her eyes and shook slightly. The concern vanished once he realized that she wasn't holding back violent rage or some sudden pain, but was in fact trying to hold back laughter behind a wide smile.  
"You're so funny!" Ami said finally when she felt that she could speak again without bursting into full-blown laughter. Whether it was the alcohol from earlier kicking in or the sudden tension from learning Kyle's profession wearing off, at some recent point her brain had decided to stop trying to process Kyle's actions logically and instead revel in the absurdity of the man.  
"I... I am?" Kyle asked, scratching the back of his head. That was odd. While he certainly thought of himself as a man of good humor, it was quite rare that someone else remarked upon it.  
Actually, it was rare anybody said ANYTHING about him that wasn't either a criticism of his intelligence or a commentary on him being able to lift really heavy things and crush them in his hands. So he appreciated the compliment.  
"So tell me more about 'evil scientist' persona of Tuko's," Ami said as she leaned forward again, feeling herself relax. Now that she had decided not to take the tale seriously, she found herself eagerly awaiting the story, no doubt full of ridiculous twists and turns and silly cliches like...  
"Well, after he sobered up and fixed my brain, he decided to try for world domination by creating robot copies of all us DAPC officers."  
Well, just like that. "Robot copies, you say?" Ami asked, snickering lightly.  
"Oh, yeah. They weren't that bad, though. He gave them all our memories and abilities and made sure that he could control them, but didn't make them evil or anything. In fact, one of them runs the Vatican right now!"  
The snickers got louder. "Really? A robot as the Pope?"  
Kyle nodded somberly. "A JEWISH robot as the Pope."  
"Ha ha ha!" Ami laughed openly, suddenly feeling even more at ease with the blonde man at the opposite side of the table. The way he threw out one ridiculous comment after another with that serious, slightly grave expression was just too much. And for a self-proclaimed idiot, he seemed to be coming up with these very creative stories at a good pace, throwing out ideas in sequence as if he was speaking from honest experience.  
She started a bit when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked over to see Makoto squeezing her gently while staring at the man across from her.  
Ami frowned at her expression, not because it had a slightly glazed quality that clearly indicated the taller girl had just come from the bar, but because she was staring at Kyle critically and deliberately, as if she was judging an animal at a harvest fair.  
The genius Senshi sighed, slightly annoyed. She had hoped to hear a few more stories and then get him into another round of Time Crisis, but it seemed like Makoto was getting ready to snatch him away. She didn't really mind her friend taking him for a date or even a "quick ride" (as Minako shamelessly put it), but it would be nice if Makoto hadn't interrupted their conversation to do it.  
"What is it, Mako-chan? Does he remind you of somebody?" Ami said sarcastically.  
Makoto cocked her head to one side. "No. No, he doesn't."

Ignoring Ami's startled expression, the ponytailed girl leaned forward over the table. "Hi. I'm Kino Makoto."  
"Tekai Kyle," Kyle said automatically, nodding, and trying very hard not to notice the spectacular view of her breasts he was offered.  
"Well, if you two are gonna be a while, then I'll hit the road," Makoto said, fanning herself as she straightened again. Ami's startled expression got worse. "What? You're leaving? But we just got here!"  
"Yeah, and I'm ready to call it quits," the ponytailed girl said bluntly. "I don't have much money on me, and unlike some people, I actually have to study to pass my tests."  
While the shorter girl was busy wondering about whether she should feel ashamed by that statement or not, Makoto started walking past them, only to somehow trip over her own feet - an action Ami had only seen from Usagi, and NEVER would have expected from Makoto - and fall forward next to Kyle.  
Unsurprisingly, he reacted in plenty of time, reaching out suddenly across Makoto's stomach to stop her fall and hold her up. "Hey, are you all right?"  
"Oh! Sorry! I'm fine!" the ponytailed girl said with an embarrassed flush as she grabbed onto Kyle's shoulders to steady herself. 'Mmmm, nice and thickly muscled. Ami had better appreciate this.' Then she moved her head closer so that she could whisper in the man's ear. "Mention quantum theory. You'll be at second base before dinner."  
She had no idea if that was actually true, but it was certainly worth a shot, and she was of the personal opinion that Ami could really stand to get laid once in a while.  
Of course, she felt that about all her friends except Minako, but that was beside the point.

Kyle blinked repeatedly as the tall brunette scampered off, smiling brightly.  
Ami frowned, her calculating mind quickly kicking back into gear to analyze what had just happened.  
Makoto hadn't actually tripped. She had better balance drunk than Ami did sober. She had deliberately fallen on Kyle like that, but why?  
Just to feel him up? That didn't make sense. Makoto Kino knew how to play the game. If she wanted Kyle, then she could have gotten much more than a quick squeeze; all she'd have to do is wait until he and Ami were done talking, and then she could have been all over him without issue. Even if she wasn't quite a romantic anymore, Makoto wasn't into copping quick feels. She tended to either ignore a man or go all the way with him.  
New data filtered in as Ami glanced at Kyle and saw his expression. Maybe she had said something to him? But what sort of thing would she-?  
A blush spread across Ami's face as her mind calculated the correct answer. 'God damn it. Not again.'  
Her friends were ALWAYS trying to get her to date more often. She suspected it was more for their entertainment than consideration for her social life, actually; her chronic shyness was such that she had felt completely humiliated whenever she tried going out with a man, and she had long since taken to ignoring the whole idea of a romantic relationship. She felt that she got along just fine without one, and frankly couldn't handle the dating process itself; the awkward moments, the self-consciousness, the constant rush of blood to her head leaving her dizzy... it was far more trouble than she was guessing a boyfriend was worth, and it also took up a lot of time that could have been better spent playing King of Fighters.  
"Hey, wanna go play King of Fighters?" Kyle asked suddenly.  
Ami felt the blush slowly fade from her cheeks as she blinked. "Uh... sure. I'd like that."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sitting alone in his cell, back facing the door, Garo fumed to himself.  
It wasn't hard to imagine the source of his discontent. Here he had been brutally captured, imprisoned under inhumane conditions, and even used for TARGET PRACTICE by his captors, all without any offer or promise of being fed at any point in the future.  
That was the worst of it. Oh, sure, the other grievances were bad, but he felt he could have weathered them easily enough if he wasn't being starved the whole time.  
The vampire sighed miserably. It had never occurred to him before his capture, but as a non-human he really had no reason to expect any sort of equitable treatment as a prisoner.  
Then again, as a non-human, he really had no reason to expect to be captured.  
'I must plot for my escape. That's my only chance. The worst they can do is destroy me, which would be better than being stuck in this cell for-  
His ears perked up as he heard the telltale beeping noise of his vault's electronic keypad.

'My, what timing,' Garo thought as he turned slightly, spying the entrance as the massive vault door slowly rolled open.  
Once the door was mostly open, Garo raised an eyebrow when he saw the DAPC's medical officer standing outside the grate of silver bars, hands clasped behind his back.  
The midian scowled. He had spent little time in the man's presence, but the way the man had prodded and all but dissected him on an examination table only to announce, after he was finished, "Huh, I guess you're not really any different from humans biologically, huh?" had quickly moved the drunk into Garo's ten least favorite people in the world.  
Actually, this whole damn department was starting to monopolize that particular list.  
'Okay, so I need a plan to get past the gate somehow. This man is obviously drunk, but I can't afford to underestimate his intelligence.'  
At that point the vampire noticed that the man was still pressing keys in the electronic keypad. After a few more moments he apparently finished, and with a fairly loud humming noise the silver gate began to slide open.  
'Huh. Perhaps I should be more worried about overestimating his intelligence,' Garo decided. Glancing behind the scientist, he could see only one other officer: the attractive redheaded woman who had been using him for "target practice." He recalled clearly that she seemed to be in dire need of such training. Perfect.  
Despite his anger at that particular incident, he found himself disappointed that she was apparently not a virgin - if the one known as "Snake" were to be believed, anyway - she would have made a wonderful servant vampiress. Oh well. She'd do just fine as a quick snack.  
"Hello there!" Seras said amiably, raising one hand to wave at the blood-stained ponytailed man. "I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time!"  
Garo slowly stood up, making sure to look particularly unsteady as he did so. "You've already taken all the time I have in the foreseeable future. Feel free to make use of it."  
"Ah, yes! First of all, I'd like to apologize for some of the living arrangements around here. I know it's... well... less than ideal."  
Garo frowned. "You refer to your fellows who fired upon me while I was contained?"  
"No, not really," Seras said bluntly. "I was referring to the fact that we haven't given you anything to eat. I mean, using you for training is one thing, but we hardly benefit from your starvation." Then the hand he was waving with earlier rose up to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment. "It's a bit of a funny story, actually. We had requisitioned some blood bags earlier to feed you with, but I found them before anybody told me what they were for, and tried to play a little practical joke on my assistant." He chuckled lamely. "So, I'm afraid that the blood was wasted. Well, unless you're willing to lick it off the floor or suck it out of my other lab coat."  
The vampire twitched, still facing away from the drunkard. "That is... quite unfortunate."  
"You're telling me! The worst part is, Yamma wasn't even fooled!" Seras complained. "Anyway, we were going to get more, but Saotome pointed out that there are actual humans who might need that blood, and we shouldn't waste any more than necessary on keeping filthy monsters like you alive."  
Garo twitched again. "I see. And so you've come to feed me yourself. You've got far too much alcohol in your blood for my liking, but I'm in no position to be choosy, am I? I thank you for your kindness."  
Seras blinked. "What? No, actually I-" he had barely begun explaining his presence when the midian suddenly bolted toward him at speeds far too fast for an ordinary human to possibly dodge.  
Whether or not Seras was an ordinary human, he certainly wasn't much faster than one, and his reflexes were in an almost perpetual state of impairment. Panicking, the scientist tried to protect his neck with one arm while at the same time raising the arm that had been held behind his back since entering the cell. In that hand was a small cylinder with a button on top that Junko had earlier commented look like breath spray.  
Suffice to say, it wasn't breath spray.

_Pssht!_ Pain slammed into Garo like a speeding truck as he felt something wet spray onto his face, and instantly his charge turned from a vicious lunge to a clumsy collapse. Screaming at the sudden agony, the vampire landed his face on the drunkard's chest, and then slowly slumped to the ground into the fetal position, clawing at his face the whole time as it was inflicted with a maddening burning sensation.  
"Tuko! Are you all right?" Junko asked in a panic, jumping into the cell with her pulse rifle at the ready.  
Seras spent a few moments panting and clutching his chest, then shook his head. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. Ha! He caught me by surprise, there!"  
Junko frowned as she watched the vampire writhing around on the floor, hissing painfully through clenched teeth. "Not quite as bad as you did him. What IS that stuff?"  
"Well, effectively, it's the equivalent of vampiric pepper spray," Seras explained. "It combines a mixture of acidic compounds, a touch of holy water, and liquefied garlic."  
"Garlic?" Junko asked, raising an eyebrow. "Okay, the acid and holy water I understand, but what is garlic supposed to do to vampires?"  
"According to common myth, it acts as a mild vampire repellent; supposedly, vampires find the smell of garlic particularly intolerable. In a few quick experiments, I noted that garlic, and to a lesser extent scallions and onions, actually react dangerously with the strange chemicals in a vampire's tissue that appear to be preventing normal necrotic decay. This reaction seems to manifest in the form of rashes, hives, muscle spasms, swelling, and apparently significant pain."  
Junko raised an eyebrow as she repeated those symptoms to herself in her head. "So... vampires are... allergic to garlic?"  
"Very much so, it would seem," Seras mumbled. "This mixture would only cause significant pain to a human if sprayed directly in the eyes, due to the acid content. When used on a vampire, however, the garlic concentration is so powerful that it can stop one dead in mid-charge and render them senseless, as we've just witnessed."  
Garo groaned as he pushed himself up, his eyes still squeezed shut. "So... this is what you wanted to see me for? More abuse?"  
"No, no, not at all," Seras insisted, shaking his head. "This was a proper experiment! I couldn't send out our officers with these items without being sure that it works!" He said condescendingly.  
Then he raised the cylinder to the vampire's face and sprayed him again.  
"GYAAAAAAH!! WHY?!?!" Garo screamed as he once again fell to the floor, clutching his face. At this point even his arms and hands were starting to sweat and turn red just from wiping the offending juices off of himself.  
"NOW I'm just abusing you," the drunkard said unapologetically. "What, you didn't really think you could try and attack one of us and get away with it, did you? Ha! Silly walking corpse! Here, have some more!" Giving the canister a good shake, he started walking after the vampire, who had started scrambling away on his hands and knees.  
"NO! Stay away, you monster! Get back! Back, I say! There will be a reckoning for this! I SWEAR IT!!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Glug! Glug! Glug! Gulp!_ "Aaah!" Snake slammed the empty beer bottle onto the table as he polished it off, pausing to wipe his mouth with his sleeve.  
Usagi blinked, and hesitantly grabbed the hem of her shirt. "Uh, do you want another one?"  
"No, not right now, thanks," the American said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. "Back to studying."  
"Okay then." Usagi opened a note book in front of her on the table, and then tapped her index finger on the table surface, causing a small, ballpoint pen tip to emerge.  
"It's important to know about scope when you discuss world history. As you might imagine, there's a lot to know," Snake began. "But because you apparently don't pay enough attention to know what the test is actually ON, we'll just try to cover all the important bases."  
Usagi sweatdropped and nodded shamefully. "Okay. Thank you again for your help."  
"To start off, it's important to know that all relevant world history occurred after the colonization of the Americas. Even then, nothing **really** important happened until the United States successfully became an independent nation."  
Usagi finished writing that down, and then frowned. "Wait, there was no world history before America was founded?"  
Snake shrugged. "Well, there WAS... but sort of in the way there were computers before the desktop PC. That is to say, it was there, but it was stupid and nobody cares." Then he raised his index finger into the air. "All relevant world history revolves around the United States of America. Everybody knows that."  
Usagi's frown deepened. "That doesn't sound right, though."  
Snake rolled his eyes. "Tell me Usagi-kun, can you name the current governor of California?"  
"Arnold Schwarzeneggar," the cyborg said without hesitation.  
"Uh huh. So you, a Japanese citizen who doesn't generally keep up with current events, can name one of fifty minor U.S. elected officials off the top of your head," he drawled.  
Usagi flushed. "Well, that recall election thing was all over the news..."  
"I'm sure it was. So, can you tell me the name of Japan's current prime minister?"  
Usagi flushed harder, and let out a nervous chuckle.  
"That's what I thought. Can I continue?" The American asked condescendingly. Usagi nodded mutely.  
"Good. Getting back to the U.S. After kicking Britain's ass back across the Pacific, the American people decided that they kind of liked the continent, except for the parts way up North which were too cold, and the parts way down South that were full of illegal immigrants - a problem that still haunts the U.S. to this very day - so they set out to claim all the land between the two areas using the standard colonial doctrines of the era."  
"Huh? What's that?"  
"Basically, the problem that European colonists faced when settling new lands is that native people already owned the land. Luckily, a seemingly irrelevant bylaw existed in the legal networks of most colonial powers that provided an expedient solution," Snake explained.  
Usagi looked up from her notes. "Really? What law was that?"  
"That dead people can't own property."  
She was silent for several seconds before mumbling "Oh..." in a small voice.  
"That isn't to say that the colonists killed off ALL of them," the American continued. "Some were enslaved or hired. Others were armed and then sent off to kill other natives. Some of them were assimilated into our culture. A bunch of them were simply screwed out of their land by colonial contract lawyers. And giant swaths of them were killed by disease because apparently Europeans aren't real big on hygiene - yet another problem that persists to this day."  
Usagi nodded, though she looked distinctly uncomfortable. "So when do we get to the stuff that affects the rest of the world? Maybe Japan in particular? There's probably going to be a lot of that, you know."  
"Fine, fine. Next we'll discuss the modernization of Japanese warfare thanks to the introduction of guns to Japan, all thanks to the U.S. of A!" The weapons expert said proudly.  
"America invented guns?" Usagi asked.  
"Sure, for all you know. We also invented airplanes, the internet, and freedom!"  
"Wow..." The ponytailed girl breathed. "America is great!"  
Snake grinned and pointed at her. "And THAT, little lady, is the most important thing you'll ever need to know about world affairs."  
Usagi began nodding emphatically before she suddenly paused. "Wait... didn't we fight a war or something against the U.S. a while ago?"  
"Yes! It's kind of a long skip from the colonial era, but it's probably more important anyway," Snake reasoned, leaning back as he rubbed his chin. "Anyway, let me tell you all about World War II... and the gleaming champion of world peace known in modern times as the 'nuclear bomb'..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ami hummed pleasantly to herself as she walked down the street from the arcade, thinking back on the interesting man she had spent her evening playing games with.  
When she thought about it, she was amazed how relaxed she felt around Kyle. Putting aside the fact that he was a member of the DAPC, an organization she had a healthy amount of respect/fear for, he was also a man, and Ami had never been at all comfortable holding even extended conversations with men.  
Kyle, however, was quite pleasant to talk to. He was kind of goofy and very casual, and it even seemed he was a skilled gamer, which Ami found quite odd.  
Really, the man was a police officer. It wasn't as if he didn't have better things to do than sit around on a sofa and play games, right?

"Ami-chan!"  
The bluette turned around as she heard Rei's voice behind her, and smiled at her friend as she approached. "Hi Rei-chan! What are you doing out here?"  
"Oh, just a little research," Rei said noncommittally as she approached. Then she cocked her head to the side. "Wow, you're in a good mood."  
"Am I?" Ami asked, blinking.  
"Seems like it. Not that that's a bad thing, but you've seemed a little stressed out lately. I don't blame you, given all that's happened, but..." she frowned. "You're not drunk, are you?"  
Ami sweatdropped. "I only had one drink!"  
Rei said nothing.  
"... In the past hour," Ami amended quietly. "Like you're one to talk..."  
The former priestess ignored the accusation as she sidled closer to the genius Senshi. "Actually, I'm glad I ran into you. I think I have a lead on the cyborg guy we fought the other day."  
"Really? You think we can find him?"  
Rei nodded. "Once I started digging up files on the domestic terrorists in Japan, one thing led right to another and soon things started to add up. Everything points toward the Freedom's Angels. It seems they've been toying with exotic technologies for years, and they've even gone around turning corpses into cyborg soldiers." She slipped her friend a folded batch of papers, which Ami opened hesitantly.  
After skimming the body of an article below a photo of an impaled soldier, the genius Senshi's brow furrowed. "Rei-chan, where did you get this? And how come I've never heard of anything like this? Somebody's reviving cadavers by implanting cerebral stimulators and false organs into them? This is unbelievable!"  
Rei nodded. "I'm meeting with someone right now who's been investigating the Central Organized Response Echelon. Apparently the government's been holding a more-or-less secret war against these guys for a few years. A year ago though, things started to get serious. We're talking advanced biological weapons, robotics, and even the undead!"  
Ami's frown deepened. "The war is hardly a secret. Everybody knows about the terrorists."  
"Most people know that terrorists occasionally attack Tokyo," Rei corrected, raising her index finger. "But very few people realize just how organized and deeply entrenched these guys really are. The government knows that if anything weird pops up and blows up a stretch of Tokyo, people will just get right back up, rebuild, and go on with their lives. But what if they knew that these attacks weren't random monster appearances, freak alien attacks, or just some lunatic with a gun and a tattoo? These goons have an ACTUAL ARMY right here in the city, complete with freaks of nature that most people - like you, for example - wouldn't believe came from a bunch of paramilitary psychos. So nobody bothers to hide the actual attacks, but not many people realize that the attacks are actually highly organized efforts funded through major Japanese corporations. Nor do they realize that these terrorists have huge, cutting-edge labs to create new weapons in."  
"This... This is..." Ami felt the last of her good cheer start to evaporate as she continued reading. "I can't believe this! And all this was going on right under our noses? Where were the Sailor Senshi when people were being turned into cybernetic weapons and killer zombies?"  
Rei shrugged. "I don't know what to say; this isn't a Negaverse threat or some troublemakers from the future, here. These are just mentally disturbed people making dangerous toys."  
"Who is it that you're speaking to about this? We have to stop these people!" Ami said anxiously.  
"Calm down. I can't tell you who she is," the fire Senshi said. "She made me promise that if I had to tell someone this, I couldn't reveal the source. And I had to work HARD to get her to allow me that much."  
Ami briefly considered the idea that Rei could have promised whatever the hell she wanted and just told them anyway, seeing how they were magical superheroes charged with the defense of humankind, but decided against voicing it.  
"Anyway, I'm meeting with her now to discuss these rashes of disappearances that have been occurring all around Tokyo recently. Given what happened to Usagi, we may have dozens of new cyborgs popping up all over the place," the raven-haired girl gave a leaden sigh. "Anyway, we'll work on fighting organized crime later. First we have to work on finding out what happened to Usagi and who can fix it. And this Igov sap seems as good a start as any. We won't let him catch us by surprise next time."  
Ami nodded. "Find out what you can, Rei-chan. Do you need these back?"  
"No, you can keep them. I'll see you later. Keep an eye on meatball-head for me, would you?" Rei asked wryly.  
Ami couldn't help but smile as her friend tried to lighten her mood a bit. "Given all that's happened, wouldn't it be more appropriate to refer to her as 'titanium head'?"  
"Hmmm... needs work," Rei decided as she scurried off.

Ami immediately found a park bench and started to read the files she had been given in earnest.  
'This is horrifying...' she thought to herself as she scanned one of the articles. 'I remember when there were those smoke clouds and explosions in Tokyo. Or at least I heard about it on the news the day after... did anyone even bother to ask WHY there were tremendous mecha stomping through the streets or where they came from? When did Tokyo become so apathetic?'  
She rolled that question around in her head briefly. 'Probably when teenage girls in glorified cheerleader outfits started keeping the peace better than the authorities,' she thought to herself, sighing. 'It really is a wonder anybody's still willing to live in Tokyo at all.'  
Folding the papers back up and slipping them into her purse, Ami turned in the direction of her dorms and started looking for a bus stop. 'For now though, Rei is right. We have to give all our support to Usagi.' Then she frowned. 'I hope she's back by now. I'm not entirely sure what she hopes to accomplish at the DAPC headquarters, but I doubt she's studying.'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are you sure this is how you're supposed to play soccer?" Usagi asked in confusion. "I always thought you were supposed to avoid hurting other people."  
Ranma snorted as he bounced the checkered ball on one foot. "That only applies to sissy non-sports, like marathon racing and golf. And in golf a lot of people still end up getting beaten to death by their opponents." He kicked the ball up into his hand. "When I throw the ball, I want you to kick it straight back at me, got it? Aim for the head."  
The blonde cyborg gulped, nodding uncertainly as she stepped back with one foot, as instructed previously. 'Aim for the head, aim for the head, aim for the head...' To her surprise, a red targeting reticule suddenly appeared around Ranma's face in her field of vision, and it rotated briefly before stopping and beeping.  
"You ready?" Ranma asked.  
"I think so..." Usagi mumbled, clearly uncomfortable with the stated objective.  
Ranma rolled his eyes at her timid tone of voice, but lobbed the ball toward her feet, readying himself to shield his face.  
In Usagi's field of vision, a blue reticule immediately locked onto the soccer ball, and she felt a strange sensation in her thigh as certain joints tightened and quickly built up pressure.  
_WHACK!_ "Gwah!" Usagi cried out as her kick tilted her off-balance, and she flailed her arms uselessly before falling onto her back.  
Falling didn't hurt nearly as much as a cyborg as it did as a human (and she had plenty of experience for comparison), so instead of lying there groaning, she immediately sat up to see if Ranma was okay.  
Ranma was, in fact, completely unharmed, and was staring down at her with an unreadable expression.  
_Plap!_ Something soft and floppy fell on top of Usagi's head, and she quickly shook it off before seeing that it was a ripped patch of rubbery material with a checkered hexagon pattern on it.  
"Yeah... your accuracy is good," Ranma began, rubbing his chin while trying very hard not to laugh, "but you might want to key down the force. Not only will it keep you from destroying the ball, but you also won't fall down so easily." He paused. "Also, I guess you could kill someone hitting the ball that hard. That would be bad, too."  
"R-Right," the cyborg said, flushing as she stood up unsteadily. "I'll try it again!"  
"Uh... or not," Ranma mumbled, scratching the back of his head. "That's actually the only soccer ball we have. Most of the time our department sports games are all paintball gunfights."  
"Oh. Sorry..."  
"Forget about it," Ranma said, waving her off. "It's getting late anyway. I'll just get a new ball tomorrow."  
"Okay then..." Usagi glanced toward the exit. "Uh... so, are you going home with me, or what? I'm kind of new to this 'bodyguard' stuff."  
Ranma shook his head. "Not tonight. We're making a raid on a vampire lair tonight, so I'll be busy."  
The blonde looked appropriately alarmed at the statement. "What? A vampire lair?!"  
"Yeah. He won't tell me how he found out without the captain knowing, but Snake found this nightclub which tailors to singles, particularly out-of-touch or socially inept teenagers. Apparently the entire point is to draw in virgins for them to turn into vampires."  
"Luring pure, innocent children in to turn them into monsters?" Usagi gasped, suddenly looking grim and gripping her hands into fists. "This sounds like a job for Sailor Moon!"  
"It's not," Ranma said, "We've got it covered."  
"..." Usagi pouted slightly as her dramatic high waned quickly. "Are you sure? It REALLY sounds like a job for Sailor Moon."  
"Don't worry, we do this sort of thing all the time," Ranma explained as he headed for the armory. "Though I guess if you REALLY want to, you can come along with us and help out. You ARE registered."  
Usagi stopped and thought hard about this as Ranma stepped into the locker room, leaving her in the hall.

When one got right down to it, no, she DIDN'T really want to come along. Usagi was not a fighter by nature, and hated combat, even if it was for a good cause (as this certainly was). She had simply gotten so used to fighting supernatural injustice that when she'd heard Ranma's explanation of what was happening, she had naturally assumed that it would fall to her and her fellow Senshi to set things right.  
But the fact was, the Senshi were not alone. This didn't have to be her fight. Yes, there were horrible, twisted, man-eating abominations prowling about in the shadows, but she had the entirely reasonable option of going home and studying for exams and leaving the conflict to government agents trained and paid to provide security for Tokyo's citizens. In fact, Setsuna had advised precisely that before she had disappeared. Yet the idea was more than just foreign to her; it was downright bizarre.  
Usagi bit her lip. Even if she didn't want to fight, and perhaps didn't have to fight, she was still worried about the officers who were apparently charging into this den of evil, no matter how confident they were. Did she want to return to the station tomorrow only to find that her history tutor had been overwhelmed by bloodsucking monsters because they had been led into a trap?  
The choice was clear. Usagi walked up to the door to the locker room and prepared to knock on it.  
Then she stopped again, not because she had changed her mind, but because she realized that Ranma was probably changing and there was really no point in bothering him now instead of waiting.  
Whether it was her nervousness about the situation or some subconscious urge on her part, after a few seconds of waiting, Usagi's vision suddenly blanked out before returning a split-second later.  
It happened quickly enough that she didn't even have time to shout in surprise. One moment, she was staring at the door to the men's locker room, and the next, she was staring through a mysterious new hole in the door to the men's locker room.  
This was understandably confusing, and she instinctively reached out with her hand toward the large circle that was suddenly missing. She was only more confused when her fingers hit a flat, solid surface where the door should have been.  
'Wait a minute...' her eyes slowly widened in growing wonder as she continued feeling the door in front of her while looking through it at the same time. 'I... I have X-ray vision?' Usagi gaped at the thought. 'I can see through WALLS! This is SO COOL!!'  
After adjusting to the idea, she started paying attention to what was actually beyond the door that she could now see.  
"Oh... wow..." she mumbled, a pink flush appearing over her cheeks. "Ranma has a really toned body..."  
"Why are you staring at the men's locker room?" Snake asked from behind her, not having caught her mumbling.  
Usagi immediately whirled around, her light embarrassed flush having turned a full, bright red, and prepared to explain herself.  
"AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!! A SKELETON!!" Seemingly on reflex, Usagi's left forearm split open, and a screaming bolt of green plasma erupted from above her wrist, sailing straight for Snake's torso.  
The DAPC's weapons expert was not one to be caught by surprise by rampaging cyborgs, and rolled out the way while simultaneously readying his own weapon as the powerful energy blast melted a dripping, scorched hole in the wall.  
_Blam! Blam!_  
Scraps of metal and glass burst from her arm as the pistol slug ripped through the energy weapon, but before she could even register the damage to her arm, the second bullet struck her straight in the forehead, knocking her clean off her feet and onto her back.  
_Thud!_

Snake frowned as he slowly stood up from his crouch, his Desert Eagle trained on the twitching blonde in front of him.  
A moment later, the locker room door burst open, and Ranma looked around frantically for the source of the disturbance. Needless to say, he was less than pleased by the situation.  
"Dammit, Snake! Why'd you kill Usagi?" Ranma growled, watching as sparks and arcs of electricity shot up around the blonde's damaged forearm.  
"She started it!" Snake replied defensively.  
"Ow..." the cyborg in question groaned pitifully as she sat up, and raised her left arm to massage her head.  
She gasped upon seeing the condition that the limb was in, and then gasped again as she finally realized what had just occurred. "Oh my God! Snake-san, I'm so sorry! I-I didn't mean to shoot at you! Honest!" Her eyes started tearing up as she clapped her hands together and shifted her legs so that she could start bowing as she begged for forgiveness.  
Snake mostly ignored this, instead walking up to the cyborg and tilting her chin up while staring into her eyes.  
Or, at least, that's what Usagi assumed he was staring at, at first. "You're kidding me! I didn't get penetration even with a .50 cal? What the hell is your skull MADE out of?" A tiny patch of skin had been torn away on the cyborg's forehead, revealing silvery metal underneath.  
"Uhm... excuse me?" Usagi asked nervously, wondering why Snake seemed to be more upset that he didn't kill her than he was that she had nearly killed him. "Are you okay? I almost shot you."  
The Texan clicked his tongue as he watched the false skin spread and seal over the exposed metal. "That's okay. No harm, no foul." Then he shrugged. "At least, that seems like the best policy now that I know that shooting you in the head only slows you down."  
Usagi blinked repeatedly. "Oh. Uh... well, I'm still really sorry." She stood up shakily and then bowed low.  
_Pzsht!_ A brief shower of sparks erupted from her arm, and she stared at the mangled weapon/appendage worriedly.  
Ranma scratched the back of his head. "So, should I get a first aid kit, or... uh... a wrench, maybe?"  
"No, wait, I think-" before she could complete the sentence, her blouse bulged slightly around the shoulders, and both officers were treated to the sight of small, spider-like robots emerging from under her collar and swiftly scrambling down her arm.  
"Oh. Okay, you've got it covered." To Usagi's surprise, Ranma immediately let the subject drop, forcing herself to once again consider just what the standard for "weird" was around these people. "Snake, are we set to go?"  
"I guess. Looks like Chikiko's coming too," Snake said, pulling back the slide on his sidearm and checking it for problems.  
"What? Why would she come along?"  
Sighing, the Lieutenant re-holstered his weapon. "I assume it's because she misunderstood the phrase 'We're raiding a single's club.' But hey, whatever. The more the merrier."  
"Uhm, if you don't mind," Usagi said suddenly, interrupting the two, "I'll come along too."  
"Not with that aim, you won't," Snake said immediately, his eyes narrowing as he crossed his arms over his chest. "If you can't hit me at two meters with no cover, how the hell are you going to kill a raging midian before it rips your head off?"  
"Aw, lay off 'er Snake," Ranma protested. "She's not exactly new to this sort of thing. I'm sure she'll do fine." Then he turned toward the girl in question. "That said, you sure you wanna go through with this? It's gonna be pretty dangerous."  
"I know," Usagi said, looking determined, and still inwardly wondering why Snake didn't seem in the least bothered by his recent brush with death, "but I want to help. Even if I don't have to do this, I won't stand by while there are innocent people being corrupted by monsters! I'm sure the other Senshi will help too!"  
"Yeah, actually, I have a much better idea," Snake deadpanned, "let's NOT bring them along. I'd rather not having a bunch of loud, obnoxious women in bright, ridiculous-looking outfits tagging along on our infiltration mission, thanks."  
"Hey! That's... uh... a good point, but still mean," Usagi protested half-heartedly, flinching slightly as one of her repair drones dug deeper into her arm to remove Snake's bullet. "So wait, how many people are we doing this with?"  
"With you, that makes four. Snake's the ranking officer, so he's in charge," Ranma explained as he put on a jacket and slipped his kodachi into the inside pocket.  
"Four people? Against how many vampires?" The blonde asked anxiously.  
"Not enough," Snake replied as he started loading shells into a shotgun. "If you're scared, go home. If you're not, grab a weapon and follow us."  
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Grab a weapon? She IS a weapon, remember?" Taking out the normal clip in his Jackal, he then inserted a magazine with an engraved cross on the side.  
"Whatever. Here." Snake reached into his pocket and produced two small silver cylinders. "New from the DA geek department. It's like vampire pepper spray or something."  
Ranma and Usagi stared at the cylinders suspiciously.  
Snake rolled his eyes. "NO, it doesn't explode."  
"I was wondering why you sounded so disappointed," Ranma remarked as he pocketed the item.  
"What can I say; I prefer weapons that make my enemies bleed, not cry."

Usagi took the second cylinder wordlessly in her right hand, trying to ignore Snake's increasingly aggressive statements, and inwardly wondering just what she was actually going to do when it came time to fight. Though it was obvious she had quite an array of useful weapons, she wasn't proficient with any of them, and had no idea how one fought vampires. Shoujo manga was annoyingly quiet on the subject.  
She was startled out of her thoughts when one of her little robot spiders crawled down her right arm and snagged the cylinder right out of her hand. It then jumped onto her other arm, and immediately began fitting the spray capsule into her forearm.  
Ranma noticed this, and pointed to the machine. "It DOES know that's not a mechanical part or anything, right?"  
"Uh... I guess. Or, at least, I hope so," Usagi mumbled. "I'm kinda still getting used to this body." The repair drone fixed its legs into an opening between the wires and tubes in her wrist, and then the opening suddenly shifted outward to allow enough room for the capsule.  
"I don't see why; you've got all that you need," Snake said, casually walking up to the cyborg and lifting up her shirt.  
Ignoring Usagi's initial cry of surprise, he tapped her stomach and then opened up her abdominal panel before withdrawing a beer.  
The blonde quickly closed her stomach up and pulled down her shirt, her face flushed. "S-Snake-san... please ASK if you want something to drink."  
"Sure, I'll do that," Snake said nonchalantly as he popped the top on the bottle. "All right; the captain's out, my shotgun's loaded, and I have my beer! Let's go conduct a criminal investigation!"

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Rei frowned deeply as she sipped her tea, staring at the girl across from her who seemed to be trying to break a record in how long one could rant hysterically without taking a breath.  
Tsuna Nagase, while being a very intelligent and inquisitive young woman, was like a lot of far-left conspiracy theorists who accused the government of corruption, lying, secrecy, and all the things that everyone knew governments did at least SOME of, but reasoned were probably best ignored so long as they didn't reach too far.  
Tsuna believed that the Freedom's Angels were actually a branch of the government funded to slowly turn private industry, typically an opponent of the government, into a vast war factory to eventually build a titanic army by converting all private citizens into zombies and robots for use in a zionist plot for world domination.  
She wasn't entirely sure whether the armies would join with the Evil American Empire in crushing and subverting the rest of the world, or go for a World War II rematch that would doubtlessly leave the planet in ruins, but she was investigating that angle diligently.  
Needless to say, Rei had learned to take Tsuna's ideas with a grain of salt early on.  
However, the rather plump bespectacled girl was no idiot, and when some of her theories about terrorist attacks and zombie uprisings started to hold water, she had latched on to them and taken to gathering good evidence like any proper journalism student instead of hanging out on street corners and waving cardboard signs. Now she was convinced she was on to something, and Rei, who shared at least her interest in the supernatural aspects of her reports, had become her outlet.  
"Vampires, Hino-san. All over the place, yet! Doesn't it seem strange that in the past two months, the number of missing persons has TRIPLED from its usual average, and yet it doesn't deserve more than a fifth-page article with no explanation?!"  
Rei didn't think it seemed strange; if someone was missing, then the authorities had no explanation to give until the case was resolved. She didn't say that, though. "And you think... VAMPIRES are responsible... because...?"  
Tsuna snorted and produced a few documents before discreetly sliding them across the cafe table they were seated at.  
Wordlessly, the raven-haired girl picked them up and observed the labels. "These are all battle reports. I suppose it would be useless to ask how you got these."  
The bespectacled girl nodded sharply. "Note the one on top. An armed police encounter when they received a report of a teenager killing his family. It apparently took SIXTY-TWO bullets to stop him - hits, mind you, not the final ammo expenditure - and he managed to kill four officers by tearing through them with his bare hands and biting one in the neck." Her eyes narrowed. "And here's the kicker: the officer he bit? About the time when the ambulances get there, he stumbles to his feet and starts advancing on the others, moaning like a zombie. It only took a single shotgun blast to stop him when they realized he hadn't miraculously come back to life, but I'm sure you can make the connection."  
Rei said nothing, but admitted that the other girl had a very convincing case, especially once she got to the next file.  
Seeing her companion moving on, Tsuna continued her narration. "A week ago there was some kind of riot going on uptown at three A.M., and Core moved in, thinking it was another terrorist engagement. They didn't encounter any 'vampires' reportedly, but the violent crowd they were sent in to subdue consisted of some thirty-something dead civilians, all of them stumbling around and eating other civilians. Needless to say, the tear gas proved thoroughly useless, and they immediately started handing out the big guns."  
Tsuna couldn't help a snort of contempt at this point, at which Rei fiercely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. From the junior journalist's point of view, officers shouldn't be allowed or enabled to perform acts of violence, and the entire police force should consist of licensed therapists. "You can see the observations on the mortician's report: two of the zombies had a pair of clean, evenly-spaced holes in their jugulars, while the others had obviously been chewed on extensively by other zombies. We can see that-"  
She stopped suddenly as the waiter stepped within earshot, and her lips pressed into a pleasant smile as the young man carried their appetizers to them.

The waiter smiled broadly as the girls at the far table noted his approach and stopped talking, though much to his chagrin the hot one barely glanced at him before poring over some kind of article in front of her.  
He had been trying his best moves ever since the pair had come in, and they had worked... on the raven-haired beauty's less desirable friend. She smiled widely at him, waved to him when he was walking away, passed a few lines of small talk whenever he came close... all obvious signs of attraction.  
But he wasn't really interested. Not that the girl was exactly hideous... she just had a lot of little physical imperfections and obviously didn't take the greatest pride in her appearance. Her hair was frayed and mussy, her glasses were decidedly unfashionable, her face was plagued by acne, and she had enough fat on her to hide any feminine curves.  
It didn't help that she was sitting across from a total fox, either. Long, shining black hair, a slim figure with long, rich legs and a respectable bustline, Rei had worked hard to maintain the beauty she had enjoyed all through high school (Minako often wondered aloud why she bothered when she didn't have a boyfriend and never went out prowling for one, but such speculation was usually silenced with a harsh glare).  
The waiter resisted the urge to sigh as he put down the girls' appetizers, seeing the girl of his dreams thoroughly engrossed in some boring document while her unattractive friend asked for a refill through fluttering eyelashes.  
Shallow and lecherous as he was, the young man wasn't a **complete** jerk, and smiled pleasantly at Tsuna before taking her empty glass. "Will you be ordering a main course, ladies?"  
"No, we won't be here for long," Rei answered absently, expertly ignoring the man's smoky eyes. She had shrugged off more charming individuals than this sap.  
"Well, don't leave too soon; this place could use a bit of class," the waiter said, smiling at both college students but winking only at Rei... who was reading the articles and wasn't paying attention.  
Tsuna giggled inanely and watched the young man walk off.

Rei sighed. "Nagase-kun, you really shouldn't encourage that guy."  
She pouted. "Why not? I think he's cute!"  
Rei put down the documents as she prepared to lecture her fellow student. "Sure he's cute, but that kid's a waiter; he jumps from girl to girl the same way he goes from table to table." She frowned deeply. "Besides, you can do better than a waiter; you know some people, get a date with someone with a future!"  
Tsuna frowned back, her brief elation at the man's flirting evaporated. "Easy for you to say... you could have a date with whoever you want..."  
"This isn't about me," Rei said sharply, moving into the tone of voice that she and Luna used to lecture the other Senshi, "you're too smart to be having stupid flings with guys who won't appreciate you. Don't let creeps like that sucker you out of your panties."  
"Hmph. I could live with a fling," the bespectacled girl grumped. "I'm finally out of high school, I'd like to actually try this whole 'dating' thing that some girls' entire lives revolve around."  
Rei rolled her eyes and decided to drop the subject, pausing when the waiter came back with Tsuna's drink.  
"Getting back to the vampire thing..."  
"Right, right," Tsuna sighed and let thoughts of her barren love life evaporate. "The vampires are clearly a new weapon of the government to destroy other nations by slowly converting the native populace into undead. With terror and chaos tearing apart domestic society, the government can more easily invade innocent nations and steal their oil," she said in a quick, hushed voice, not noticing as multiple sweatdrops appeared on Rei's head.  
"The government... okay..." the part-time Senshi murmured. "So then why does every bit of evidence you have of these creature's existence show the government fighting to destroy them?"  
Tsuna frowned. "Well, some vampires probably went rogue when they found out that they would be expected to kill and corrupt innocent civilians-"  
"And made their displeasure known by killing and corrupting innocent civilians?" Rei interrupted, crossing her arms over her chest.  
"Okay, well, maybe they were set loose specifically so that the police could look like heroes by destroying them!" The junior journalist guessed.  
"And you have evidence that they're not actual heroes destroying a bunch of monsters?"  
Tsuna scowled. "All right, fine, you made your point. I don't really have much more than theory and hunches on the government's involvement. But I KNOW that there are vampires on the rampage."  
Rei nodded curtly. This was why she went to Tsuna: when you cut through the paranoia and nutty "everyone rich and powerful is evil" mindset, the girl actually had some useful ideas and discoveries and the proof to back it up. Of course, they still SOUNDED crazy, but there was a huge gulf between crazy conspiracy theories and crazy conspiracy evidence.  
Looking at the last file in the stack of documents, Rei raised an eyebrow at the source. "So this report is from the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment?"  
"Yeah, it is," Tsuna managed to put an impressive amount of venom into the simple affirmation. She despised government agencies who oppressed people and committed violence, and there were few government agencies as corrupt and violent as the DAPC, and NONE that were as blatant about it. In her opinion, destroying something because you thought it was "abnormal" was the height of human ignorance and fearful hatred.  
For once, Rei could empathize with the sentiment. "This is pretty detailed. It looks like those psychos do this a lot."  
"No doubt," Tsuna spat. "Even now they admit to capturing a vampire for observation and dissection. Or at least they claim; as a government agency, they probably know all there is to know about the vampires that they created." She glanced across the table and noticed Rei's half-lidded stare. "Maybe," she amended. "And, well, if the government had nothing to do with it before, then they will now that they have a vampire to replicate and release on the public at whim."  
"That would seem to be at odds with the DA's well-known 'destroy, annihilate, kill' policy of investigating anything out of the ordinary," Rei reminded her. While Rei would never take on the gargantuan task of convincing Tsuna that the government did NOT exist to destroy and torture its citizens, she found that it helped to keep the junior journalist honest by at least pointing out when her conspiracy theories contradicted each other.  
"Hmph. Right," the bespectacled girl said as she took a bite of the shrimp appetizer. "Whatever. For all the DAPC's corrupt, wanton warmongering, they seem to keep some very good records. Nearly half of my data comes from their public archives." Then she leaned in close. "Did you know? It seems they even arrested the SAILOR SENSHI! Can you believe that?"  
Rei's eyebrow twitched. "Yeah, I can believe that."  
"Imagine, locking up a group of heroes just for being magical girls!" Tsuna snarled. "The DAPC are the real crooks!"  
Rei nodded smugly.  
"Those girls saved so many lives! And they're willing to arrest them just because their form of justice doesn't conform to their fascist ideals?"  
Rei chuckled. "Believe me, you're preaching to the choir."  
"I'll bet even now, those poor girls are being tortured, brainwashed, and dissected to serve the government as 'registered' keepers of the peace!"  
Rei sweatdropped. "Um... well, I doubt that, actually."  
"Why do you always take the government's side?"  
"Look, do you have anything else on the vampires?" Rei asked, starting to get a bit frustrated with the other girl.  
Tsuna clicked her tongue. "No. Well... no, not really," she said uncertainly.  
"Nagase-kun?"  
The bespectacled girl looked across the table uncertainly for a moment. "Hino-san, just how far can I trust you?"  
Rei winced. "Probably not far enough to actually ask me that question."  
"Hmmmm..." the junior journalist didn't seem at all put off by her answer. "There's a place I want to investigate... but it could be risky, and I'm not sure I want to go alone."  
Rei frowned. "What kind of place? A cemetery?"  
"No, nothing so cliche as that," Tsuna deadpanned. "It's just a night club. It might be nothing... or..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"And then, when the Dark Kingdom had nearly overrun the Silver Moon Palace, Queen Serenity used the ginzuisho to banish the enemy to a pocket dimension, and send the Senshi's souls forward to be reincarnated... well, recently," Sailor Saturn said as she relaxed on the surprisingly soft cushions laid out in the antechamber of the ancient fortress.  
The glowing, semi-transparent individual had given her a brief introduction as Nal'Shek, a lord from somewhere in deep space. Although Saturn was understandably curious and wished to know more, the poltergeist deflected all her inquiries, instead being intensely interested in the stories about a dead empire that used to rule the immediate solar system.  
She found the spirit's increasingly passionate lust for information a bit disconcerting - not so much more as the very act of holding an extended conversation with a dead person, however - but found no harm in telling the (former) man the secret history of the Silver Millennium. It was only a secret in the first place because few people would believe it, after all.

Nal'Shek paced a four-meter space of the castle antechamber, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Saturn guessed that he might have dug a rut in the floor if he had been substantial.  
"Why 'banish' the enemy?" he said suddenly. "Why not destroy them outright?"  
Sailor Saturn shrugged. "Maybe it wasn't powerful enough?"  
"It seems unusual to me that a device that can bend time and space and construct suitable barriers to prevent dimensional breech is incapable of simply rending apart flesh or annihilating a stubborn soul," the spirit answered. "But the idea has merit. What became of this 'Dark Kingdom'?"  
Saturn frowned. "Well, some of the other Senshi defeated the main force that originally destroyed the Moon Kingdom, but the rest of them are still there, I guess. Every once in a while something breaks free and we have to go kill it, but it's been years since we had to face an organized plot."  
"And so you heroes of this dead era stand ready to protect Earth from these creatures, then? That's all you do with your powers?"  
Saturn blinked at that. "Well, that's not ALL... eventually we hope to resurrect the Moon Kingdom, and purge all evil from Earth to create an eternally harmonious society."  
Nal'Shek stopped pacing. "Create a WHAT?"  
"Well, Sets-er, Sailor Pluto called it a 'utopia.' A land without war or suffering or strife where all humans could live peacefully and happily," Saturn explained to the increasingly alarmed spirit.  
"I... I see," Nal'Shek said, returning to his pacing.  
He was about to ask another question when Saturn beat him to the punch.  
"Now could you explain what's going on here? I really shouldn't stay too long," the Senshi of Destruction pleaded.  
The poltergeist frowned. "I really don't know what to tell you about 'what's going on.' You arrived here, I walked out to meet you, and here we are."  
Sailor Saturn crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, can you at least tell me where I am?"  
"You're in my fortress," Nal'Shek explained unhelpfully. He sighed when the purple-haired girl glared at him. "I really doubt I could explain your location in a manner that would be of any help to you. You're on planet Earth, and you're underground."  
"Underground WHERE? Am I in Japan? Are we in a mountain, or under the ocean, or what?" Saturn pressed.  
"I haven't the slightest," the spirit admitted. "I'm not sure if humanity had even been properly organized into recognizable tribes when I arrived here, much less nations. Even so, I'm more used to recognizing planets as the most common example of a sovereign entity. I really couldn't care less what particular patch of dirt is sitting on top of this place."  
"Well, it's kind of important to me," the purple-skirted Senshi groused. "Speaking of which: how do I get out of here?"  
Nal'Shek shrugged.  
"You're kidding me," Saturn said, massaging her head. "PLEASE tell me you're kidding me."  
"I had forsaken the surface for this fortress long before I died here; as I said, the surface was a place of rampant barbarians without a hint of civilization. I much preferred sitting down here by myself without anyone with which to hold an intelligent conversation to trying to hold an intelligent conversation with inbred apes while they threw things and tried to make off with the shinier pieces of technology I brought with me."  
Saturn sweatdropped. "Well... still... you must have left SOME way to the surface, just in case..."  
"It's entirely possible I did," the spirit admitted, "but if so, I've long forgotten it. As you can imagine, an emergency exit is of very little use to you once you're dead."  
"Well, than what am I supposed to do?" Saturn said sharply, her voice slowly rising toward a growl. "I'm sure you found this a very nice place to spend half your life, but I have things to do."  
Nal'Shek nodded his head. "Indeed. Indeed. Since that's the case, I suppose I should help. It'll take a bit of searching, but given time, I'm sure I can find a way out for you." Then he turned toward her. "You look rather tired, though. Why don't you get some sleep, and I'll start checking the eastern passageways for openings to the surface?"  
Sailor Saturn was about to nod, but caught herself as she considered something. "Actually... I was wondering if you'd tell me a bit about yourself."  
"Hm?" The spirit looked mildly surprised at the request.  
"Well, I've been telling you all about the Moon Kingdom, but what about you?" Saturn pressed. "You're an alien, right? Where are you from, and how did you get here?"  
Nal'Shek looked uncertain for a moment, as if debating the question internally. Then he nodded solemnly and sat down next to the purple-skirted girl (entirely as a gesture, of course; as he possessed no mass, there was nothing for the seat to support).  
"Well now... that story begins a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Dark Hearts singles' club wasn't an overly unique little establishment on the surface.  
There were some things about the club that were different from the norm... again, on the surface. They tended to target and advertise to teenagers in high school and college, which, while objectionable to some parents, wasn't anything to warrant an investigation over. That there seemed to be an unusual number of missing persons that were last known to be heading to the club one night was more worrisome, but few considered the club itself responsible. Disappearing for days on end was part of the swingers and reckless youth's lifestyle, and where could some back-alley dance joint possibly profit from harming them?  
Like any other singles' club, the message they tried to get across was "come to us and you'll get laid." Common claims were that the club was constantly filled to the brim with sexy, fun-loving individuals of every gender and persuasion who would gladly hook up with any average Joe who walked through the front door instead of each other.  
The slight difference is that the Dark Hearts club seemed to deliberately appeal to the types who wouldn't normally be caught dead in a club: nerds, workaholics, social recluses, traditional women, devout Catholics, and just plain ugly people.  
Although none of the people who prowled around the schools handing out fliers said so explicitly, there were many rumors that suggested that the club deliberately drew in and tailored to virgins. And whether those people were virgins by choice or circumstance, it was said that they never left that way.  
Of course, there were other changes in those individuals besides their sexual experience, but no one other than their now-isolated families and close friends noticed when they started playing hooky all the time, and only appeared on sunny days wearing hats, large overcoats, and large shades.  
There were some who got a vague sense that something was wrong with the place. Mostly, these people were non-virgins who had gone to the club and found that, for some reason, the pale, well-built patrons seemed to fawn over the stumbling, pimply nerds rather than slick, experienced individuals who often left the club early and alone. Others could simply feel a sense of... "wrongness" in the club. An almost imperceptible chill in the air that intensified every time they made eye contact with certain people in the club... as if they were a piece of cattle being judged for market. And still others could swear that they'd heard brief screams of terror coming from some of the private rooms upstairs...  
Snake didn't know any of this, as he didn't have the attention span to conduct a proper investigation. He had ascertained the club's name and purpose from shooting a captured vampire and then kicking him repeatedly until he was convinced that it was giving him a real location instead of just making up a name to get Snake to stop.  
Still, one couldn't start bombing a night club because a single captured undead monster confessed it was a well-disguised vampire factory. It just wasn't proper.

_Pchnk!_  
The man at the front door jerked back as a bullet tore through his shoulder, and he blinked repeatedly. "Wh-What the hell?"  
Snake shook his head as he lowered the silenced P99. "Look at that. Barely even flinched. Guy's a bloodsucker, all right." Behind him, Ranma stepped forward while Junko and Usagi watched in anxious silence.  
The doorman's eyes widened at the accusation, and he leapt into action, tearing toward Snake with one hand ready to rip the American's throat out.  
Snake stood calmly in wait as Ranma dashed in front of the midian, grabbed his outstretched arm, and then twisted around to slam the undead man face-up into the ground. Then Snake silently took aim at the doorman's chest.  
_Pchnk! Pchnk! Pchnk!_  
Ranma growled as the vampire tried to claw at his throat with his free hand, jerking and spasming each time a bullet stabbed into his heart.  
Eventually, after Snake started cursing and reaching to his belt for another clip, the vampire let out an especially sickening gurgling noise, and his skin began to harden and turn an ashen gray.  
Ranma gave a disgusted noise as the creature turned to dust underneath him, and stood up before wiping off his pants.

"Stupid nine mils couldn't put down a damn kitten," Snake spat, slipping the silenced pistol into his jacket. "Now the Israelis know how to make a REAL gun! .50 AE would've blasted his heart right outta his chest!"  
Usagi looked confused. "Then why didn't you use that?"  
"Because we're still being all stealthy-like, and **nothing** can silence a Desert Eagle," the weapons expert confided. "All right, now it's time for the battle plan. We lucked out in arriving when nobody else is here, but we have to act fast." He removed a small block from his other jacket pocket. "I'll start arming the place. You three go in and mark your targets, but be careful not to blow your cover before the time is right."  
Ranma frowned at the block in Snake's hand. "Wait a minute. You're going to blow up the building with us and all the non-vampires still inside?"  
"Of course not!" The American said, sounding affronted. "What do you take me for, some kind of maniac?"  
The ensuing silence spoke volumes.  
Snake fumed. "These are GARLIC bombs."  
The others sweatdropped.  
"Garlic bombs? Did Tuko make those?" Junko asked, eyeing the explosive suspiciously.  
"Yeah, he did. It's like he thinks we're running riot control on these freaks or something. It's mostly a concussion charge which blasts stock garlic powder all over the place. It's supposed to be like vampire tear gas, but I wouldn't count on it stopping a bloodsucker for long." He stared down at it. "If it does work, though, it should be a lot easier to tell between the humans and the vamps, and it'll give you a head start on killing them."  
"Uh... problem..." Junko said suddenly, shuffling her feet as she raised her hand. "You know, all things considered, I really shouldn't have volunteered to go on this mission. I mean, how helpful do you really think I can be once things start getting violent?"  
Snake mulled that over as he pulled out his shotgun and cocked it. "Huh... yeah, that's a good point."  
Then he slammed the butt of the weapon into Junko's forehead.  
"Snake?! What are you doing?" Usagi shrieked as the redhead collapsed backward on the ground.  
"I'm awakening her deeply disturbed, psychotic alternate personality to help us on this mission. Why?"  
"You just HIT her in the head! That's horrible!" The blonde complained angrily.  
Snake shrugged. "Well, whaddya want me to do? That's how it's done! Not my fault she can't be awakened by some sort of stupid, mundane thing like a keyword or a favorite smell or something."  
"You've got a point," the redhead said suddenly as she staggered to her feet. "We really should find a more skull-friendly way to do this."  
Usagi turned to her immediately. "Junko-chan, are you all right? Does it hurt bad?"  
The older woman blinked repeatedly. "Hmm? Oh, I'm fine. This sort of thing happens a lot." Then she smiled broadly. "I'm Akina! Who're you?"  
It was Usagi's turn to blink. "Huh?" She idly noticed that Ranma had been slowly edging to the side ever since Snake had struck the redhead, until the point that Usagi was standing between him and the girl in question.  
Snake sighed and stepped up next to Akina, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Usagi-kun, this Akina, Junko's second personality. She's a violent, nymphomaniacal killer with psychic powers."  
"Hello!" Akina said cheerfully, waving at the blonde with one hand while the other slipped behind her to grope Snake's butt.  
"Oh. H-Hi," the cyborg said uncertainly, waving back. "You seem kind of... well... nice, for a... everything he said."  
"I get that a lot!" Akina said, giggling as Snake slapped her hand away.  
"I'm not sure how much you remember from when you were sane, so let me recap the mission quickly before we move out: Try not to kill anybody until the explosions start. Only kill the vampires. Clear?"  
Akina looked confused. "Vampires? You're kidding, right?"  
"I'll take that as a 'yes'. Saotome, you're in charge here. Good luck!" Without further instruction, Snake dashed around the corner to go plant his bombs.

"Vampires, huh?" Akina mumbled as she stared at the building in front of them. "This looks like a dance club."  
"Well, it is," Ranma explained cautiously, making sure to keep Usagi between him and the redhead at all times. He was currently dressed in his nicest casual clothes, and he'd really prefer not to have them torn off his body this mission. "They take in gullible teenage kids and bite them to turn them into new vampires."  
Akina sighed. "Man, what a gyp. How come everybody calls me in when they need something eviscerated? Why doesn't anyone ever need me to infiltrate a strip club or glean information from a studly terrorist mastermind or something?"  
"Well, I think Junko could probably cover those things by herself," Ranma guessed. "But she usually has trouble cutting people's heads off. That's where you come in."  
"C-Cutting people's heads off? We need to cut their heads off?" Usagi squeaked, having decided to ignore the whole issue of Junko being crazy for now.  
Ranma sighed and scrubbed the back of his head. "Look, to kill a vampire, you have to destroy the heart or the head. It's not gonna be pretty in there, so stick close to me."  
_Glomp!_ Before he could begin to regret that statement, Akina had latched onto his side, clamping her legs around his.  
"Whatever you say, boss," she purred into his ear.  
Usagi sweatdropped as Ranma started struggling to pry the redhead off himself.  
"Akina, cut it out! We're supposed to be acting like singles!" He growled.  
"I AM single, and I AM acting like it!"  
"Dammit, Akina!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had taken some time, but eventually things had settled down to the point where the trio could actually enter the club without Akina clinging to Ranma's arm, and they tried to enter as inconspicuously as they could.  
The inside of the place, Akina noted, looked fairly low-key for a club, though in respect to its presumed "hidden agenda," things seemed about right.  
Instead of loud music with lots of dancing and mingling, nearly everyone in the place was seated with someone of the opposite gender, chatting amicably while relatively soft music played in the background. Had she merely glanced at the interior, she might have guessed that Dark Hearts was a popular dating spot rather than a singles' club.  
Such results were, in all likelihood, due to the efforts of the vampires running the establishment to match newcomers up with an alluring partner and eventually move them to nice, isolated places where the nosferatu could "reproduce" in their own special way.  
'Well, I hope they at least get SOME of the other kind of reproduction; there are some serious hotties here,' Akina thought as her eyes swept the room.  
"How do we tell the vampires from the normal people?" Usagi asked nervously in a hushed whisper. Truth be told, it seemed fairly obvious that the pale, trim, and beautiful people were the vampires while the squat, unpleasant-looking individuals they were with were the prospective victims, but she wasn't going to decapitate anybody on just a likely guess.  
Ranma frowned. "Well, I can tell 'cause vampires have these really weird auras... don't you have a scanner or something that can help?"  
"I dunno. Maybe." Frowning, the cyborg tried squinting at a group of three individuals who were talking amongst themselves while stealing glances at the newcomers.  
_Beep! Beep! Beep!_ Almost immediately, targeting reticules came up around each one.  
+Heart rate 0. Targets maintain normal respiratory and nervous functions despite cessation of circulatory systems. Unit scan file complete. Units designated as enemy targets. Expanding search...+  
"Oh... okay, I think I've got it," the blonde mumbled as she scanned the rest of the room, watching as red reticules appeared over some individuals while the others were ignored.  
"Good. We'll split up but stay in sight of one another, okay?" Ranma said quietly.  
Akina raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't it be better to let them lure us into an isolated room, and then kill them there?"  
"No, because if we wait for Snake we can get them all at once, and it doesn't run the risk of us getting caught in a bad situation where no-one else can help," he hissed back.  
"But it's **boring**," the redhead protested. Ranma just glared back at her. "Look, there's no way I'm going to stand around and make small-talk for half an hour or however long this takes. Either I start killing dead people, or you take me into a shadowy corner and make out with me until I go off."  
Usagi blinked, suddenly distracted from her reconnaissance. "Don't you mean until the bombs go off?"  
"Whichever comes first, I suppose."  
Ranma finally threw his hands up in defeat. "Fine, FINE. Do whatever you want. Just PLEASE be careful, all right?"  
Akina smiled and pinched the martial artist's cheek playfully. "Awww, are you worried about little ol' me? You're so sweet!"  
"Whu yuh jush gho ahrery?" Ranma deadpanned best he could with his cheek stretched out.

Across from the club, three midians stared intently at the trio opposite.  
Amongst them, one may have recognized Ranma, at least, as a member of a famously destructive police force, but Ranma had unbraided his hair and worn sunglasses to discourage identification by anyone who hadn't actually met him before. Junko had taken similar measures by wearing a pair of stylish, fake glasses and putting her hair in a bun, but needn't really bothered.  
"Whaddya think, Toro?" The sole woman of the three grinned while staring across the room at the man in shades. "They don't look like the typical fare around here." Her canines seemed to elongate slightly as she stared at him before she drew her lips together.  
Toro, a shorter vampire with silvery blue hair, had been sniffing the air gently with his eyes closed. "The guy... not a virgin."  
The woman pouted, but wasn't really surprised, and didn't bother to argue against the diagnosis. Toro's sense of smell was amazing and unique even among vampires, and he had never been wrong before.  
_Sniff._ "The redhead... not even close," he deadpanned. Then his nose wrinkled. "The blonde is, though... well... I THINK..."  
The taller man jerked his head around. "You THINK? You're not sure?"  
Toro frowned. "Well... no, I'm sure she's a virgin... it's just..." His frown deepened. "I don't really know what it is. I'm getting a lot of weird scents off of her."  
"What, she doesn't bathe?" The woman asked.  
"She does. Her shampoo is strawberry-scented," the shorter midian replied. "Like I said, I don't know what it is."  
"Well, why don't you find a private room and find out for yourself," the other man replied, drawing himself up as he watched the trio of humans split up. "I'm going for the redhead."  
"Oh? Hitting the spoiled meat, Sai?" The woman asked slyly. "Well, just make sure to take the ghoul out and dispose of it properly. We don't want a repeat of last week."  
Sai smiled, revealing his own dagger-like fangs for a moment. "Who said I was gonna bite 'er? Humans have more uses than just food and raw materials, Konoke. I wouldn't ruin a body like that so easily. Besides, it's been too long since I was with a chick who actually knew what she was doing."  
Konoke nodded solemnly, being able to appreciate the sentiment. In order to better transition the new vampires into their "unlives" and calm them down after technically being killed and reawakening, it was traditional for the Dark Hearts staff to finish seducing their victims immediately after biting them, and the fact that only virgins could be turned was a common complaint, particularly for the female nosferatu.  
It also didn't help that most of them were ugly as sin, either; while shaping one's body to get rid of imperfections and imitate a higher standard of beauty was a simple skill that even the lowest vampires could perform, it was a bit much to ask from someone whose primary concern was that they'd just been stripped of their very humanity.  
Toro turned toward her. "Are you going after the male?"  
She sighed. "No, I'd better not. There's some Goth loser in the corner who turned down Miika. I should probably go give it a shot."  
The blue-haired vampire chuckled softly. "Reproductive quota is a bitch, isn't it?"  
"Mm. Enjoy your meal."

Akina glanced around the club as she approached the bar, analyzing the scene and comparing it to everything she knew about real dating clubs.  
'Look at these kids. Most of them would never have the nerve to give a pretty girl a friendly greeting. And all they have to do is walk in here and gorgeous women just start fawning all over them.'  
She stopped and stared at one particular boy in a booth across the barren dance floor who seemed to be paralyzed as two voluptuous girls fondled him and kissed at his ears and neck.  
Her hackles rose. 'Poor, attention-starved little bastard...' She continued on, taking a seat at the bar. A quick glance around at the other people at the bar, and she immediately guessed that it was a congregation point for the non-virgin humans. These people looked to be more the type that would actually go to night clubs, and those who were not busy talking to other people at the bar mostly had confused/bitter expressions as they snuck glances at their social inferiors being seduced by the club's more attractive patrons.  
Of course it didn't make sense to them why their ugly, reclusive friends were practically dragged into the back rooms to get laid while they were mostly ignored. Despite understanding, though, Akina couldn't bring herself to feel sorry for these people; they were the lucky ones, after all. They were only spared to keep the operation from looking too suspicious. If every individual who walked through the door either became a sunlight-hating sociopath or was never heard from again, the club would be investigated in short order.  
"Hey studly, gimme a single scotch, on the rocks," the redhead said to the bartender, noting that he seemed much bigger and well-muscled than the other people she assumed to be vampires... or the others, for that matter.  
The pale, muscular man turned, and she met his dull red eyes unflinchingly. He turned away uninterestingly, dry-washing a glass as all bartenders seemed to do when not actively serving alcohol. "You got some I.D., babe?" he asked through the side of his mouth.  
Akina blinked, astonished. "You kill people for food, and yet you card them for drinks?"  
The bartender froze. "Wh-What did you just say?"  
"Here you go," Akina slapped Junko's driver's license onto the counter while glancing around for eligible targets. Of course, she was old enough to drink alcohol, though some bartenders and cashiers (usually the smoother ones) still asked her for identification; she had just been honestly surprised that a den of vile, undead monsters would care.  
The bartender looked down at the card, and then looked up at Akina dubiously. "Okay. But... seriously, what did you say just now?"  
"Hm? Oh, I just said that I would kill for some food. Can I use my card to pay for drinks?" The redhead asked brightly.  
"Oh! Uh, sure..." the bartender gave her an uneasy look, and then moved to fulfill her order.  
"Don't worry about your card; a lady like you shouldn't have to pay for drinks," a rough, confident voice said behind her.  
Akina turned and grinned at the tall, devilishly handsome man who sat down next to her. "Oh? You gonna pick up my tab, big boy?"  
"I'm hoping to pick up more than that. Name's Sai," he said smoothly, amazed at how receptive the woman was. 'Toro was on the spot, all right. Definitely no virgin.'  
Akina giggled and turned to face him, gently raising her hand up and tracing a finger down his cheek. "Well then, I'll have to find a way to thank you, won't I?"  
Sai didn't seem to notice when her finger continued down his neck, stopping briefly at the point where one would normally feel for somebody's pulse. Even if he had, it's open to speculation whether he would have made anything of it, but at that moment his hands were busy running up Akina's thighs and occupied his full concentration.  
Sai grinned like a predator standing above a fresh kill.  
Akina grinned back in the exact same way.

Usagi, for her part, had no clue what she was doing. She possessed neither Akina/Junko's experience, nor Ranma's mind for strategy. While Minako and Makoto frequented clubs like this often and occasionally even managed to drag along Ami and Rei, Usagi had never gone with them. There were only two things to do at night clubs: drink and flirt with strangers. Usagi's experiences with alcohol had taught her to stay away from it (and taught the others to help her in this endeavor), and she had been the only inner Senshi with any sort of meaningful, long-term relationship. So she was completely new to clubs.  
Luckily for her, or unluckily depending how one looked at it, this particular haven tailored specifically to naive young women without a whole lot of experience in dating. The sight of a clearly confused girl glancing from gathering to gathering and wondering what she should do and who she should talk to was a common and welcome sight to the stalkers of the Dark Hearts club.  
Toro, incensed by the blonde's unusual array of scents and odors, approached the ponytailed girl from behind, silently gesturing to other interested nosferatu that he intended to take care of her.  
Most of them looked none too happy at being denied; the blonde was a looker, especially compared to most of the other eligible victims.  
"Pardon me, Miss, are you looking for somebody?" Toro asked, his voice pleasant and polite.  
Usagi jumped slightly and turned around quickly, startled. "Huh? Well, no. I mean, yes, I am, but not somebody in particular. Uh..."  
Mistaking the girl's fear from being surrounded by vampires for simple shyness, Toro smiled at her. "Well, then you've found somebody, then. Why don't you have a seat with me?" He took her arm gently, and gave her a soft smile that would have had her melting into his arms under much different circumstances.  
The current circumstances, however, involved her sweating profusely as warning alarms blared inside her head.  
+WARNING! WARNING! Enemy target at melee range! Enemy contact engaged! WARNING! Engaging combat mode!+  
'No! No! No combat mode! Stop combat mode! Stupid head computer, you're gonna blow my cover!' Usagi thought, trying to banish the waves of warnings and calculations running across her field of vision, as well as all the targeting reticules appearing over the short vampire's body, in particular his heart and head.  
+Class D nosferatu identified! Activating battle computer!+  
'Stop! No battle computer!'  
+Compiling defense options... generating anti-midian protocol!+  
'Cut it out! Whatever you just said you were gonna do, don't do it!'  
+Enemy is inside effective combat range! DANGER, Usagi Tsukino, DANGER!+  
'I know that, now shut up!'  
+Enemy elimination is strongly advised! Cleanse! Purge! KILL!+  
'Shut up, shut up, shut up!'  
"Are you all right, Miss? You seem frustrated by something," Toro asked gently.  
Usagi blinked, and shook her head as most of the alarms and warnings finally succumbed to her will and silenced themselves. The computer still insisted on a putting the blue-haired boy in a flaming red outline, however. "Oh, sorry! I was just, uh... remembering something I should have turned off... back at home, that is." She noticed that at some point during her distraction, she had been led to one of the lounge tables, and was currently sitting much closer to the blue-haired boy than she would have liked, considering that she was currently trying to stay absolutely loyal to her estranged fiancee to prove her love to him.  
Well, there was also the fact that he was an undead monster who wanted to suck out her blood and turn her into a fellow walking corpse. That was quite a repellent in itself.  
"My name is Toro. I used to have a last name, but to be honest, it doesn't mean much to me anymore." He smiled wanly at his prey's confusion. Most girls figured that a boy without a last name had a troubled and dramatic past with his family, which gave him a seductive and mysterious edge.  
"Oh, uh, my name is Tsukino Usagi," she said immediately, bowing slightly before she stopped to ask herself if it was a good idea to tell him her full name.  
Maybe it didn't matter... she was going to destroy him later, right?  
'Remember, he's just a monster who feeds on people,' the cyborg thought grimly as Toro began going on about how cute her name was. 'Just a demon with a pretty face. I've seen lots of them before. He's no different.'  
Toro was silent for a moment, noting that Usagi seemed distracted from his flirting. "Usagi-chan," he began, causing the blonde to squirm from the presumptuous honorific, "tell me, are you around guns a lot?"  
THAT got Usagi's attention. "Huh? Guns? No, of course not!" She said honestly.  
"Really? How odd. I could have sworn you smell faintly of gunpowder..." the vampire mused, leaning back into the seat cushion.  
Usagi was completely flabbergasted. 'I smell like gunpowder? How? Just from standing next to Snake, maybe? He was firing a gun earlier...'  
"Then again, you have quite a unique aroma, I must say," Toro admitted, sniffing the air. "What scent is that in your hair? Strawberries?"  
Usagi nodded as she let out a breath of relief. For a moment she was worried that she stank and people would think she didn't take baths. "Wow, you have a... sensitive nose, huh?"  
"Mm, yes, I've been told that," Toro allowed. "But I get so much more from you... machine oil? Are you a mechanic of some sort?"  
'This is bad. I think. Maybe.' Usagi tried to think of something to say to change the topic. She didn't her think her cybernetic nature was in any danger of being revealed, but better safe than sorry. "No, but I suppose I am around cars a lot," she lied. "How do you recognize the smell so easily? Are you a mechanic? And how do you know what guns smell like? Do you know any police officers or anything?"  
Toro blinked, surprised at having the questions directed back at him. Most girls were far more interested in his past and his romantic attachments than his career or friends. "No, I don't know any police officers. Considering you don't work with guns at all, perhaps I'm completely wrong about the smell after all." He tilted his head to the side. "As for my job, I actually work as an artist... of sorts."  
'Well, great. I got him to stop asking me about how I smell, but now he's being boring.' "Really? That's SO interesting!" She said with a completely false smile.  
"I'm not very well-known yet, of course, but I'm making my way up," Toro continued. Then he frowned as a small group of men, whom Usagi quickly identified as more vampires, walked up to him and gestured him over.  
Looking annoyed, Toro got up to speak to them quietly, glancing at something by the entrance.  
Usagi couldn't see it because the group was in the way, but didn't care enough to make the effort. 'I should probably get away from him before everything starts exploding,' she guessed, slowly standing up.  
"Ah, so you're tired of this place too, hm?" Toro said as the other vampires moved away. "I agree, it's a bit bothersome out here, isn't it?"  
"Uhm, that wasn't really the problem," Usagi mumbled, fidgeting.  
"I was thinking, perhaps we should continue this conversation... in a private room," the midian said, gently taking the blonde's hand as he flashed her his best smile.

There were two things that Ranma really hated while being on-duty (or in this case, doing the sorts of things he would be doing on duty while he was technically on his own time): being in charge and being idle.  
Authority was the bane of the DAPC officer, as the potential abuse of the power to command a half-dozen dysfunctional, heavily-armed fools never outweighed the cruel plight of being ultimately responsible for the damage they did. Aside from that, trying to give orders to someone like Tiro or Akina was a lot like arguing with Akane Tendo: no matter who won, you always ended up with a throbbing headache.  
Ranma never liked being idle, either, because he possessed only a slightly longer attention span than Kyle, the poster child for ADD (or he surely would have been, if he wasn't twenty-seven years old).  
Akina was right; this plan was boring. The fact that it was Snake's plan practically ensured that the boredom would end with a brief, painful episode of explosive terror, but that didn't help Ranma any.  
Looking for the girls he had entered with, he saw Akina giggling inanely as she was herded upstairs toward the private rooms by a tall, rough-looking man who registered cleanly on Ranma's ki senses as being dead but still moving.  
He debated going after her, but hesitated as he saw Usagi sit down with some blue-haired kid - another vampire, he realized after a moment - across the room.  
'The hell with it. Akina got herself into this, and she can handle herself. It's Usagi I'm worried about,' he decided.  
He was mildly surprised that the vampires had been leaving him alone ever since his entrance; if they could tell he wasn't "pure" right off the bat it would explain why there weren't several undead women fawning over him, but he couldn't help but notice that all the vampires that got close tended to shy away from him and grant him a greater berth almost immediately.  
'It's a predator's instinct,' Ranma thought as he stared hard at the blue-haired kid talking to Usagi. 'They know that I'm a big fish, but they're not sure if I bite.' He'd have to practice his aura exercises again and try and tone down his aggressive ki a bit, as the midians seemed to be picking it up. It had been such a long time since he'd had to bother that he couldn't manage it off the top of his head without reverting to the soul of ice, which may have alerted the vampires that something was wrong.  
So there he was, killing time by making up a list of targets in his head and prioritizing them, when someone tugged gingerly on his shirt.  
"Who...?" Ranma turned around calmly, recognizing before looking that it was a human behind him. "Uh... yeah... can I help you?"  
Standing to his right, and looking quite agitated for some reason, was a young, slim woman with long, black hair wearing a modest red blouse and khaki pants.  
"What are you doing here? Do you know what this place is?" Rei asked in a hushed whisper, trying not to draw too much attention to herself.  
Ranma was silent for several moments. "Uh... well... what are YOU doing here?" He countered.  
"Saotome-san, are you in the middle of an operation? Are there more officers here?" She started looking about wildly, and only missed seeing Usagi because Ranma was standing directly between her and the Senshi princess.  
The martial artist started to become nervous. "Is this...? Uh, well... I... I can neither confirm nor deny that," he tried. "Who are you, anyway?"  
Rei suddenly looked taken aback. "What? You don't remember me? Rei Hino?" She almost growled. Men did NOT forget Rei Hino. And if Ranma had, then she was going to correct that error with extreme prejudice.  
Ranma looked at her uneasily. "This isn't about a deal my pop made, is it?"  
Rei took a deep breath, preparing to give the man a long, loud tirade that would smash his stupid ego and make sure every individual in the damn club could testify to the event.  
Instead, she just ended up holding her breath. 'Crap! I forgot! We only met when I was Sailor Mars!'  
She began to bigsweat as Ranma started looking at her face more critically. "Oh! Uh... you know what? I think this is a case of mistaken identity! Sorry about that!"  
Ranma frowned, unconvinced. "But you knew my name. And that I was a police officer."  
"Oh, well, you know how many Saotomes there are in the police force!" Rei tried, now slowly backing away.  
"Are there that many?" Ranma asked suspiciously, stepping forward.  
"Yes! Of course! And it makes sense that I'd confuse you for someone else because you're in disguise!" Rei pointed out.  
Ranma's eyes narrowed. "How do you know I'm in disguise?"  
In response, Rei slapped her hands over her mouth, which didn't really help her case one bit.  
Crossing his arms over his chest, Ranma waited for an explanation.  
Then, something in his mind clicked. "Wait! Now I remember you! You're... uh..." He lowered his voice significantly. "You're Sailor Mars, aren't you?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Akina gave a seductive glance to one of the more muscular vampires who was leaning over the guardrail of the second floor, which overlooked the dance floor of the lounge below.  
"Hey there big fella, why don't you join us? Make it a two-fer?" She said playfully, reaching out and pinching the man's butt cheek.  
His face lit up in undisguised interest for a moment, before he saw the suddenly disgruntled look of the redhead's male escort.  
"Whoa, hey, I'm not so sure about this," Sai said, backing away a few steps. "With another guy? No dice."  
Akina laughed. It was a cheery, musical sound that somehow managed to sound arousing and contemptuous at the same time. "What's wrong with that? Afraid you won't measure up?" Releasing the guard, she backed into the first vampire, firmly rubbing her rear against his crotch.  
All at once, the confident, can't-fail attitude was back. "Hey, don't you worry, babe. I'm more than enough for you, I promise."  
The guard remained curiously silent, not wanting to ruin a chance at the bodacious redhead, but not any more keen on a two-man threesome than his counterpart.  
Junko pouted and took the guard's hand, pulling it to her chest to cup her breast. "Aw, c'mon guys! PLEEEEEEEEASE? I promise I'll make it worth your while..."  
Both men briefly shuddered, and they felt their lust surge suddenly as waves of pure, undiluted pleasure assaulted their brains from a source unknown.

With their arousal peaked, they felt the last of their inhibitions and insecurities melt away.  
"Well, there's a first time for everything," the guard said, opening up the door to one of the rooms before pulling his shirt up over his head.  
"YAY! You guys are the best!" Akina cheered, hugging the nosferatu from behind and pressing her breasts into his back. "C'mon in, Sai! I've got SO much to show you..."  
Sai entered eagerly, and closed the door behind him before quietly locking it. He turned and was about to take off his shirt, when he realized that his recent conquest was removing her own top. Not wanting his vision obscured during such a vital moment, he grinned silently at the sight.  
Akina tossed her shirt off to the side, and tugged on the straps of her black silk brassiere for good measure. Then she twisted her hips as she slipped out of her pants, smiling brightly at the leers of the undead watching.  
Once her jeans laid in a pile at her feet, she began groping at them for a moment before settling forward on her knees. "Well boys, it looks like we'll have to do this one at a time."  
Sai chuckled as he started to unbutton his pants. "I gotcha. Can't be helped, really."  
Akina sighed. "Nope. It looks like Junko only brought one knife."

All things considered, it took entirely too long for the two lecherous midians to figure out what was wrong with that statement, and as a result, Sai had the terrible misfortune to die in one of the most humiliating ways possible for a man: with his pants halfway down to his knees.  
_Thunk!_ The vampire let out a strangled cry as the combat knife solidly pierced his heart, and staggered backward briefly, nearly tripping on his inconveniently positioned jeans.  
He didn't trip, but that was only because Akina dashed forward and grabbed the handle of her knife, eliciting a short spray of blood from around the hilt as she slammed Sai into the wall, driving her blade down further into the vampire's second most important organ.  
The bloodspray was much worse when she twisted the knife and then tore it free; not by pulling it out the way it came, as would be easiest, most expedient, and least psychotic, but instead by ripping it out to the side under the vampire's shoulder. He promptly began to turn into dust.  
_Whp!_ Akina deflected a punch for her head from behind, grabbing the offending arm and then twisting her body into a roundhouse kick aimed straight at the second vampire's head.  
Akina was mildly surprised when he bounced off the wall instead of plowing through it, leaving a deep indentation and a number of cracks in the plaster. Apparently the walls were pretty solid, which she had to admit was probably a good idea when people were alternatively being murdered and having sex (usually in that order) in the adjacent rooms.  
"What the hell ARE you?" The guard growled, baring huge, thick canines as he jumped to his feet.  
Akina blinked innocently as she picked up the bloodied shirt out of the dissipating dust on the floor, and used it to wipe off the blade of her knife. "Me? I'm just a police officer."  
"P-P-Police?" the vampire spat in disbelief.  
"Mm-hm. You've been very bad, luring these poor, impressionable teenagers here and turning them!" She lectured, jabbing her knife at the man as she frowned at him. "I'm not sure what the official legal penalty is for transforming people into man-eating walking corpses, but I'm planning on killing you all in self-defense anyway, so it won't matter."  
"S-Self defense?" The man stuttered. Then his expression hardened. "So if we leave you alone, you can't hurt us?"  
_Schnk!_ A silver flash erupted from around the midian's neck, followed by a prominent wash of blood.  
Akina giggled to herself as the headless corpse tumbled forward, breaking into dust when it hit the floor. "Hee hee! You vampires are so stupid! Just wait, I'll skewer all of you!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rei shook her head wildly, her eyes wide.  
"Sure ya are! You said your name was Rei Hino, and that's the same name on Mars' registration."  
Rei shook her head again, though she kept her hands clamped firmly over her mouth.  
"Oh, come off it. It would explain why you knew me, since we met when you were tryin' to take Igov out. I didn't recognize you without your cheerleader outfit."  
"It is NOT a cheerleader outfit!" Rei hissed through clenched teeth. "It just happens to be extremely effeminate magical armor that-" Then she hung her head. "God damn it..."  
Ranma sweatdropped. "Would you chill out? I'm not gonna tell anyone. Besides, now that I know who you are, I can tell you th-"  
"Hino-san, why did you run off like that?" Tsuna whined, coming up behind the raven-haired girl. She had been delayed for some time by the group of charming, handsome men that had practically walled them in a minute after they'd arrived. Amazingly enough, right after Rei had bolted to talk to this fellow, they had started hitting on her!  
She was quite pleased with this new development, and intended to get right back to being picked up by sleazy clubbers as soon as she figured out if Rei would need a ride home or not.  
Rei tensed up visibly, and swallowed as Tsuna saw who she was talking to.  
"Hi! Are you a friend of Hino-san's? What a coincidence meeting you here!" She said brightly.  
Ranma chuckled. "Well, we're more like brief acquaintances, but yeah, it sure is!" He leaned forward slightly as he searched her face. 'Is she one of the Senshi too? Hard to tell off the bat...'  
'He's checking me out! I can't believe it!' Tsuna gushed inwardly. 'This place is great! I can't believe I didn't come here earlier!' In her elation, and in a move that she would chastise herself for endlessly later that night, she had entirely forgotten the original reason she had come to Dark Hearts.  
Smiling broadly, she took his hand firmly and shook it. It was a western greeting, true, but she felt it had several advantages over Japan's traditional ones in that A) She got to hold hands with a cute guy and B) There was no rule that said you had to let go right away, giving her an anchor to her new prospective boyfriend.  
"My name is Tsuna Nagase! Nice to meet you!" She chirped.  
Ranma was unfazed by the handshake, and was about to introduce himself in kind when Rei interrupted.  
"Whoa, whoa, hold it! Nagase-kun, are you serious?"  
Tsuna noted Rei looked upset about something. 'Oops. Maybe she was coming on to him and I got in the way?' "What's wrong, Hino-san? Was I interrupting something?"  
"Never mind that! Don't you recognize him?" Rei asked irritably, pointing to Ranma's face.  
Ranma himself stayed quiet, making the assumption that Tsuna was a Senshi and Rei was simply surprised she didn't recognize him. He noticed that the bespectacled girl hadn't let go of his hand, though.  
Tsuna shook her head. "No. Why, have we met before?" She really had no idea how Rei would know if they HAD met. She hadn't known Rei for all that long, and they had always met alone.  
Rei snatched off the sunglasses Ranma was wearing. "There. Do you recognize him now?"  
Tsuna cocked her head to one side. "Well... no... wait..."  
The fire Senshi fumed for a moment. "Imagine him with a pigtail."  
Tsuna's eyes widened.  
Ranma chuckled as she apparently recognized him, though he still didn't recall the name "Tsuna Nagase" on any of the Senshi's registration cards. "I'm Ranma Saotome. Sorry about this."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warning alarms were going off in her head again, but this time, they weren't coming from any electronic sensors.  
'He wants to take me to the private rooms? He's gonna bite me! He's gonna bite me and kill me and turn me into a vampire and defile my pure, innocent, virgin flesh! NOOOOO!!'  
Usagi snatched her hand away as if it was on fire. "N-No thank you! I like it fine out here!"  
Toro blinked at the unexpected rejection, and then smiled. "I'm sorry if I came across as presumptuous. I don't intend to do anything inappropriate; my friends here insist on bothering me frequently, and I would love to talk to you at length, without interruptions."  
'Nothing inappropriate my butt. Keep your hands off of me, you perverted dead guy!' Usagi sat down in her seat and clutched the cushions tightly. "No thank you. I'm fine here. I arrived with a friend, you see, and he might get worried if-"  
She stopped talking as Toro chuckled. "Ah, yes, your 'friend' is right over there, and seems to be busy with those other ladies."  
Blinking in surprise, Usagi turned to look at where Ranma had been standing last she checked, and she gasped.  
Toro, thoroughly misunderstanding the source of her surprise, smirked slightly as he leaned forward.  
'What? What's Rei doing here? And who's that with her? Why is Ranma-' her thoughts were cut off as her current companion gently cupped his hand under her chin and tilted her head up.  
"There, you see? Your friend has abandoned you. I'll take care of you from here on out."  
Usagi wanted to say something akin to "How has he abandoned me by holding a conversation with one of my other friends," but instead found her jaw unmoving as she slowly rose from her seat, her face softening.  
Were this the old Usagi, champion of love and justice, the minor hypnosis would have run its course, easily allowing the vampire to seduce the innocent, naive young woman... at least until the various forces of good in the area came down on him like a sledgehammer.  
This was not the old Usagi. And the one-hundred and fifty kilograms of new Usagi took exception to the attempt at amateur mind control.  
+Neural corruption detected. Nervous system purge initiated.+  
Usagi flinched as she felt a mild stinging sensation in her head that seemed to crawl down between her shoulders and dive down her back, spreading a light, tingly feeling all over her body, and stopping her from rising further against her will.  
+Enemy has initiated hostile action. Engage combat mode?+  
Toro, who was still gently guiding the blonde up by her chin, would have figured out something was wrong fairly quickly, but had suddenly looked away as somebody started shouting from across the room.  
Usagi placed her hand up against his chest.  
'Engage combat mode.'  
_Ker-chak!_

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tsuna stared wide-eyed at Ranma, then glanced down at her hands, which were still firmly clamped onto his.  
"AAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!" She screamed, snatching her hands away. "You touched me! You touched my hands!"  
Ranma stumbled backwards, taken completely by surprise as he suddenly became the center of attention. "What? No! You touched MY hands! What's the problem, anyway?"  
Tsuna didn't appear to be listening, however. "He touched me!! My palms have been soiled with the blood of innocents!!"  
Rei swallowed and slowly backed away, realizing that her big mouth had just created two minor catastrophes in as many minutes.  
Ranma looked offended by Tsuna's screaming, which most would agree was entirely fair. "Hey, I don't kill innocents! And I ALWAYS wash my hands after they get bloody! It's just good hygiene!"  
"Liar! Tyrant! Murderer!" Tsuna shouted as she backed away, pointing at the disguised officer. "I know of your monstrous ways! Your devotion to the lies! Your endless lust for blood!"  
Ranma began to sweat as more people moved to watch the spectacle. "What? No, you have me confused with Snake! My lust for blood totally has an end, and I'm a horrible liar!"  
"Don't try and talk your way out of this, you bigoted bastard!" The junior journalist shouted. "You're all the same! You and all you murderous DAPC officers!"  
As dozens of pairs of eyes oriented on Ranma and flared an angry red, Rei mentally chalked up one of the catastrophes to "major." 'I really, really suck...'  
It was anybody's guess whether or not things got better or worse when the high-pitched whining noise of an energy weapon charging suddenly came from the other side of the club.

_SCCRRREEEEEEEYAAH!!_ Toro's vampiric nature didn't help him a damn bit as his entire upper torso was stripped of its component electrons by a huge beam of yellow energy, and the remaining bits of his body started to turn to dust as the majority of his body collapsed into clouds of free-floating particles that were whisked away in the backwash from the blast.  
Naturally, the vampire wasn't the ONLY thing blasted away, and the patrons of the Dark Hearts club, vampire and human alike, stared at the huge new hole in the wall in morbid shock.  
_BLAM!_ The shock turned to panic as one vampire's head exploded into gore, and then crumbled into dust.  
"Hino! Crazy lady! Get outta here! Now!" Ranma shouted, leveling his Jackel at the next target.  
Tsuna's sudden terror instantly turned to rage. "Who are you calloomph!"  
"Now is NOT the time!" Rei growled, dragging the other girl toward the exit posthaste.

_BLAM! BLAM!_ Ranma growled as his second shot went wide, annihilating a good chunk of a vampire's shoulder and blasting her into a wall.  
'Not good. This is SO not good,' he thought, sensing a dozen different targets darting toward him at high speed from all directions. Jumping up, he barely managed to dodge a slash from a midian diving at him from the second floor, and twisted around to aim his pistol at the vampire before it touched down.  
_BLAM!_ The vampire hit the ground as dust, but it proved to be no deterrent as more and more vampires raced past screaming, panicked humans to kill the intruder.  
Ranma landed on the second floor, and he grit his teeth as MORE of the blasted undead burst from the private rooms up there, most of them in various states of undress. 'Dammit, where is Snake and his overkill when you need it?'  
"STOP RIGHT THERE!!"  
Amazingly enough, the vampires did. The snarling midians and screaming humans alike silenced themselves and turned to behold the latest interruption in what was proving to be an extremely bizarre turn of violent disasters. "What in the world..."

Usagi kicked aside a lounge table and stepped forward, clad in the black bodysuit that had become her new combat uniform, her expression grim.  
"Night clubs are places for sleazy, desperate guys and emotionally unstable, recently dumped women to meet in drunken stupors and spend a single night pretending that there exists some light and loving warmth in the empty, pitiful black pit that makes up their lives!" She declared self-righteously, pointing at the vampires.  
Many of the human patrons winced, and several of them looked down and shifted their feet.  
"So, okay, maybe it's NOT the happiest or purest place in the world, and maybe it DOES make a cruel, dark mockery of love and romance!" Usagi continued hotly. "But damn it, it's just wrong to eat people and turn them into zombies and vampires!" She pulled her arms back, and twin energy blades suddenly erupted from her wrists with a sizzling crackle. "I am Cyber Moon! For great justice, I WILL PUNISH YOU!"

The vampires frowned slightly as the newly anointed "Cyber Moon" stood there scowling at them.  
"Well, that was pointless," one of them murmured. "Can we kill her now?"  
"Sure, after the-" the bartender blinked as he looked up at the second floor. "Hey, where'd that cop go?"  
_Shwck!_ In response, a wide silver arc streaked through a couple of vampiresses that were blocking the exit, and Ranma seemed to fade into being as their bodies collapsed.  
"Snake! Finish up with those damn charges and let's finish this!" He shouted, once again leveling his Jackal as vampires streaked toward him.  
_BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!_

Several more of the vampires charged for Usagi, who met their charge with a wide slash that forced them to break and scatter.  
Still twisting her body around, she managed to catch one of the midians on the follow-up swing, and the blades' crackling, sizzling noise intensified greatly as they severed his head and left shoulder from the rest of his body.  
She managed to step forward and skewer another vampire before a young undead woman tackled her from the side, smashing her into a table.  
"Gotcha, bitch," the vampiress snarled, her fangs enlarging as her jaw siezed onto Usagi's neck.  
_Crunch!_  
"Glk!" The vampire twitched as Usagi struggled against her, and then tore her mouth away from the cyborg's throat and start spitting.  
"Pthaw! Thack! Ptooey! What the HELL was that? Tasted like gasoline or something! And I think I chipped a tooth!"  
Cyber Moon replied the moment she got her arm free by ramming her right energy blade up into the woman's ribcage and out her back.

_Whump! Thud!_ Two vampires paid for their hesitation to join the battle when they were sent flying from the second floor and down into the first floor at extremely high speed. One had the reflexes to roll with the impact and get away with a meaningless bruise, but the other impacted squarely on his head, snapping his neck and effectively incapacitating him for the rest of the fight.  
"Hey, I didn't know you guys started the fighting already! Why didn't you tell me?" Akina complained as she looked down at the chaos of the first floor.  
Another vampire that had remained on the second floor immediately leapt at her. "DIE, you little-!"  
Before he could complete the sentence, she had grabbed his head out of the air and twisted around, transferring all his momentum into a nearby wall and very nearly tearing through it. A firm cut across his neck severed the head, and the redhead turned away as the body started to disintegrate.  
She frowned. "Man, that's a lot of enemies. I wish I had more than one knife."  
Seemingly on command, Ranma bounced off of the back of one vampire and hurled a kodachi toward her. "Junko! Catch!"  
One vampire saw the exchange, and his body became a blur as he tried to jump up and intercept the weapon.  
Luckily, bullets moved faster than even Ranma could throw a knife, and after slugging away another vampire, he unloaded another silver bullet that sent the interloper back to the ground with a gaping hole through his abdomen.  
Akina easily snatched the blade out of the air, and then pouted.  
"Ranma-kun, you know I'm not Junko, I'm-"  
"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE CALLED, JUST GET DOWN HERE AND START STABBING PEOPLE!!" Ranma yelled as he started moving again, his other kodachi flashing wildly to stave off the undead trying to flank him.  
Grumbling to herself, Akina leapt downward into the fray, blood washing upward in graceful crimson arcs behind her.

_K-chnk!_ Usagi's rocket boosters popped out of her back as she was backed into a corner by her remaining targets, and she clenched her teeth as she felt them charge up.  
"Cyber Moon Kick!" She shouted, her boosters activating as her leg swept upward.  
All things considered, the Cyber Moon Kick was probably one of Usagi's better ideas. By using the power of her jet boosters, she could multiply the forward momentum of the kick (already somewhat stronger than the original version used by Sailor Moon) for maximum impact force. At that level of kinetic energy, even a vampire would have its torso reduced to cream, its vital heart ground into a fine soup along with various other organs, assorted fluids, and powdered bone.  
Usagi soon learned however, that no matter how strong the attack, there was the possibility of a miss. And the stronger the attack, the more devastating the consequences tend to be.  
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!" Vampires dove out of the way desperately and humans squeezed their eyes shut as Cyber Moon sailed across the width of the club with the power of a rocket engine behind her.  
_WHAM!!_ The trip, Usagi decided, was far too short, and the landing not nearly soft enough.  
Before she could start digging herself out of the pile of debris and even think about starting a system check, something grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her forcibly out of the pile before holding her upside-down in the air.  
Blinking in surprise, she turned to see who had pulled her out, and winced upon seeing that it was the club's bartender, looking none too pleased and possessing a pair of thick, fierce-looking fangs.  
"I'm gonna enjoy this," he snarled, his hand reaching for Usagi's throat as he pulled her up higher.  
Frowning, Usagi raised her arm and flicked her wrist at him.  
_Click!_ A piece of PEZ popped out of her wrist and onto the floor.  
Cyber Moon flushed slightly. While the vampire was now staring at the piece of candy in confusion, that was not what she had meant to do. Raising her arm again, she tried twisting it this time.  
_Psht!_ A spray of Seras' liquid anti-vampire spray washed into the midian's eyes, and he shuddered violently before his grip on Usagi's leg slipped.  
"AAAUGH!! Wh-What the? Grrgh!" He staggered backward, tearing off part of his shirt to try and wipe his face clean.  
Usagi rolled to her feet after hitting the ground, and remembering the weapon she had reflexively unleashed on Snake earlier that day, morphed her arm into the appropriate device.  
_Pshaw!_ There was a brilliant flare of light as the plasma bolt struck the bartender square in the face, and he staggered backward again.  
_Pshaw! Pshaw! Pshaw!_ The next three bolts all impacted around his torso, burning through cloth and flesh alike. Oddly enough, however, they didn't seem to do nearly as much damage as they had inflicted on the metal walls back at DAPC headquarters.  
Cyber Moon was further shocked when the much-blackened figure suddenly charged forward and seized her, grabbing her plasma-weapon arm and pointing it away as he slammed her into a wall.  
"Huh? ... Oh, gross!" She nearly gagged as she stared into the charred, blackened surface that used to the be the vampire's face, only to watch as it slowly melted back into place, with muscle seeping out over fresh bone, and skin slowly wrapping over his head as the regeneration progressed forward. All the while, chunks of fused carbon crumbled away from the midian's head, spilling down his body and onto the floor.  
"Did you think a fancy flashlight like that could hurt me?" The vampire taunted as small, milky white sacs appeared within the folds of charred flesh and slowly inflated into his eye sockets. "Let me tell you something interesting before I kill you and then kill your little friends: These vampires you're knocking off left and right are kids. Figuratively and literally. Do you know what that means?"  
Usagi shook her head silently.  
"Do you think killing vampires is this easy? Stab 'em in the heart, they're done? These aren't real vampires you're taking out, they're just babies. The helpless cubs of the wolf pack." He snarled, and his huge, pointed teeth grew even larger. "I'M a real vampire, Blondie. I've put in the decades. Your garlic is a cute trick, and your wacky space gun is just an inconvenience to me. I'm the big wolf guarding the den, and now your time is up." Hair started sprouting up as the final bit of skin closed together over the bridge of his nose, and his jaw opened wide.  
Usagi winced. "You know that biting me won't do anything but hurt your teeth and give you a nasty taste in your mouth, right? Another one already tried that. I'm, like, mostly metal and everything."  
The bartender seemed to hesitate, and his teeth shrank slightly. Not that Usagi had been trying to buy time in particular, but the last time she had been bitten it had really hurt, and the girl who had bitten her hadn't gotten off any better. If it was going to be a lose-lose situation every time, then Usagi saw no reason to go through with it again.  
But sometimes buying time works, too.

_BWAKOOM!!_  
The entire building shook slightly, and Usagi was briefly aware of a massive cloud of dust descending on her before everything was momentarily obscured.  
She started coughing immediately, and just as quickly her nosed detected the powerful odor of the cloud.  
Garlic.  
_Hack! Glack!_ The bartender started breathing heavily as the dust started invading his lungs and fought his advanced regeneration in earnest. Vampires technically didn't need to breathe, but any midian will tell you that it's a difficult habit to break.  
"What the _Cough!_ hell is with you _Hack!_ people and your garlic?" The head vampire snarled as he waved a hand in the air to ward off the settling dust. Once her vision was mostly clear, Usagi could see that his skin was covered in red patches, and his veins were throbbing all over his body.  
"Dammit, just DIE!" The vampire snarled, applying as much strength as possible to Usagi's neck to try and snap her head off.  
_Ch-chak!_ "Age before beauty, old-timer," Snake said, grinning as he poked his Pancor Jackhammer into the side of the bartender's head. _BLAM!!_  
The vampire was totally bowled over by the blast, and went spiraling away before landing limply on the floor, the dust billowing out under his body from the impact.  
Usagi released a gasp of relief as she slumped forward off of the wall. "Snake-san, you're finally here! What took you so long?"  
Then she took a look at him, and noted that the DAPC weapons expert had several gashes on his chest and shoulders, as well as a bite mark on his arm. "Oh."  
"Yeah, 'Oh.' Stupid pansy nine millimeter rounds," the American grumped.  
Neither Snake nor Cyber Moon seemed particularly surprised when the barkeep pushed himself up off the floor, his head bleeding profusely and his chest gasping for air.  
"You can't... kill me..." the man mumbled, stalking forward as his face repaired itself before their eyes. "I am... immortal... do you... know what... that MEANS?" He grinned fiercely, apparently unconcerned with the complete lack of fear in his targets. "Your weapons can't kill me! You can't stop me! You're all DEAD!"  
_BLAM!_ "Gugh!" the barkeep staggered forward as his abdomen burst open in front of him, and he cried out in agony as he fell to his knees.

Ranma lowered his Jackal and glared at Snake. "You know, if you needed help, you could have alerted me. You KNOW I'm better at killing things quietly than you are."  
"Eh, I did well enough," Snake countered. Then walked up to the kneeling vampire and grinned. "Well, it looks like blessed silver even works on you tough guys. I tell ya, immortality just 'aint what it used to be." Still smirking, he planted the Pancor Jackhammer firmly into the nosferatu's mouth, and his hand tightened around the trigger.  
"Not that I want to ruin this dramatic moment," Ranma interrupted, "but a shotgun blast in the mouth might not do him in, and we're all gonna look really lame if he gets up again and we have to find a wooden spike to put through his heart or something."  
Snake considered this silently for a moment. Then his hand slipped upward off the stock of the weapon, and he switched it to "full auto."  
"Yeah, I think that'll do it."  
_BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BLAM!!_

Kicking aside the vampire's dust as it mixed freely with the garlic dust, Snake walked into the center of the Dark Hearts club and cleared his throat while he loaded his shotgun. "Attention, patrons of this corrupt, seedy deathtrap! This area is now under the official control of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment! If you have a pulse, but were too stupid to leave when you had the chance, this is your FINAL chance to get to safety! If you don't have a pulse, this is likewise your last chance to flee, but you won't make it 'cause we'll shoot you!"  
As if in demonstration, he turned on his heel and took aim at a woman trying, unsuccessfully, to climb up the side of a barstool. _BLAM!!_  
He turned back around as she crumbled to dust, and saw to his satisfaction that there were several people standing up from under tables and chairs and dashing for the exits, apparently unhindered by all the garlic in the air.  
"All right then! Chikiko!"  
Akina stood up straight and saluted.  
"You go upstairs! There may be some recently turned in the private rooms upstairs. Put them out of their misery," Snake ordered.  
The redhead blinked. "Isn't that kinda cruel?"  
"In a way, it certainly is. Which is why I'm giving the task to you, quite possibly the only person in our department less averse to brutal murder than I am."  
Akina nodded. "That's a good point. I'll get right on it!"  
Usagi leaned over to Ranma. "Is anyone going to ask why she's running around in her underwear?" She whispered.  
"No. Giving her attention just encourages her," he replied.  
"Tsukino-kun!" Snake shouted, causing the cyborg to stiffen at attention, despite her lack of training to do such. "You hold the back entrance! Kill anything that isn't alive!"  
Usagi blinked. "What? But if it's not alive, how can-"  
"You know what I meant, now move it!" The American shouted.  
"Eep! Moving!" The blonde squeaked, dashing toward the rear of the club.  
Ranma turned toward Snake. "So, should I take the main entrance?"  
"No, I'll cover that," Snake confided. "Saotome, I want you to do a sweep of the club proper..."  
Ranma nodded.  
"... and collect all the wallets from the dead."  
_Whump!_ More garlic dust billowed outward as Ranma facefaulted.  
"Collect WALLETS?" the martial artist asked incredulously.  
"Well, yeah. Vampires have money too, you know. And now all they are is dust and clothes." He turned and aimed at a shape trying to crawl away from the bar. _BLAM!!_  
Then he turned back. "So why should we condemn all that free yen to fiery destruction when this place blows in four minutes?"  
Ranma sighed. "Okay, okay, I'll... wait... blows in four minutes?"  
"Yeah. 'Cause, you know, that's when the bombs explode," Snake deadpanned.  
"You mean, more garlic bombs?"  
"No, I thought I'd try a light oregano explosive this time," the American said sarcastically. "Maybe with some parmesan mines to kick it up a notch?"  
"You didn't tell us you set more bombs!"  
"You really should have figured that out on your own."  
"Dammit, Snake!"  
"Better get moving."

Vampires dusted: 37  
Secret government conspiracies cracked wide open: 1  
Stupid government conspiracies alluded to: 4  
Jokes made about stupid hippies: I lost count, and it's late. Let's say a lot.

End Chapter 5

Author's note: After showing this chapter around, it became clear that many people didn't get the Zero Wing ("All your base are belong to us!") reference at the end of Usagi's speech. Apparently I've exceeded the standard geek threshhold for the fanfiction community at large, which fills me with equal parts shame and joy. After much deliberation, I decided to leave it in, as obscure and not-so-obscure references such as this have always been a big hit with those readers that understand them. Also, I'm tired.


	6. Trial and Error

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."  
- Albert Einstein

"Preparation goes a hell of a long ways toward winning wars, though."  
- Asuka Takami

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **techniques or emphasis**, 'thoughts', (side comments)+writing, computer readouts+

Millennium  
Chapter 6  
Trial & Error

_Riiing! Riiing! Rii-Beep!_  
Minako grunted as she finally managed to fumble her cellular phone open, and groaned miserably as she the device over to where her head was still embedded in her pillow.  
"Hello...?" She mumbled, not deigning to open her eyes.  
_Minako! Why aren't you answering your communicator?! We need to move out to rescue Usagi right away!_  
Minako was silent for several moments. "Oh... it's you, Rei-chan. Hi. What's up?"  
_"What's up?" I just told you what's up! Get out of bed and get your henshin pen, now!_  
"... Okay, sure, I'll do that first thing tomorrow," Minako mumbled, her eyelids still refusing to open. "'Night, Rei-chan."  
_What? What're you... No! Don't you DARE han-Beep!_  
Already falling back asleep, Minako pressed the appropriate button to turn her cell phone off, then let her entire arm go limp, dropping the device on the floor as her hand dropped off the edge of her bed.

Several minutes later, there was a knocking on the front door. Predictably, no one moved to answer it. After a brief pause, the sound of a key fumbling a lock open was heard, and Makoto stumbled into the room, looking only slightly more awake than Minako.  
"Okay... okay... I'm in her room... now what?" Makoto asked the communicator in her hands.  
One could very nearly feel the frustration coming from the communicator in waves. _Mako-chan... this IS something of an emergency, but you should probably get some coffee or something. We need you to be ALERT when you get here._  
"Right, right. I'll alert the coffee when I get there," the brunette mumbled. "But seriously, what am I doing here?"  
On the other end of the communicator, Rei resisted the urge to scream. She could appreciate that their nighttime Senshi duties in the past had instilled in them all a healthy appreciation for a full night's sleep, and didn't begrudge her teammates in taking advantage of their freedom to get plenty of rest in the recent years, but honestly, the girls were in college! They shouldn't be THIS dead at one-thirty in the morning! Didn't Minako and Makoto go to all those crazy late-night parties?  
_Mako-chan... listen to me VERY carefully... Usagi is in danger. You need to wake up Minako and Ami and meet me at the edge of the courtyard NOW._  
Makoto nodded, trying to break through the haze of sleepiness. "Okay. Right. Usagi is in danger. Got it."  
"Mako-chan?" Usagi asked, yawning as she sat up from her bed. "Is something wrong?"  
"Yeah. Gotta transform and go rescue you," the ponytailed girl said, still bleary-eyed.  
Usagi cocked her head to the side. "Rescue me? I don't think I need to be rescued."  
Makoto frowned deeply, and then scratched her head as she raised her communicator. "Usagi says she doesn't need to be rescued."  
_I don't care whether Meatball Head thinks... wait... you mean she's THERE?_  
Makoto nodded, forgetting that the gesture couldn't be perceived over the phone. "So can I go back to bed now?"  
_No! Well... I guess... NO! Just stay there for a minute, all rigtht? I'll be right there. Beep!_  
Makoto groaned as Usagi continued to stare at her, and let her hand holding the communicator fall limply to her side.  
"Mako-chan, is everything okay?" The blonde asked worriedly.  
"I dunno," Makoto mumbled, breaking for a moment to yawn. "Rei-chan's convinced you were attacked by vampires or something."  
"Oh. THAT," Usagi said, chuckling nervously. "It's okay. We took care of it."  
Makoto frowned as she shook her head, her unbound chestnut hair flying wildly at the gesture. "Wait... 'we'? You and Rei? No, but, no then..."  
"Nughn? Whos'ere?" Ranma mumbled, slowly sitting up from where he had been resting on the couch .  
He blinked repeatedly as he stared up at Makoto, who blinked repeatedly as she stared back down.  
Like a light switch, the brunette suddenly seemed to be completely alert, and grimaced before she turned and zipped into the bathroom.  
Ranma frowned and scrubbed his head with his hand. "Wha' was that all 'bout?"  
Usagi shrugged from where she was sitting up in her bed. "I'm... not sure..."  
A few seconds later, Makoto walked out of the bathroom, utterly beaming. Her hair was done up in its usual ponytail style, and it seemed she had found time to apply makeup as well. The only part of her that not been neatened was the T-shirt and pajama-bottom pants she was currently wearing, the former of which was now hanging off of her breasts rather scandalously.  
"Ah. I see now," Usagi murmured, sweatdropping.  
"Hi! You must be that officer that Usagi-chan's told us all about! Saotome-san, right?" She said brightly, showing none of the sleepiness that had been so obvious only moments before.  
"Uh... yeah. Nice to meet you," Ranma said uncertainly.  
"My name is Makoto Kino! It's so nice to finally meet you!" She gushed, bowing deeply and exposing even more of her poorly concealed cleavage. "So! Usagi-chan tells me that you two aren't dating!"  
Usagi groaned and fell back into her pillow. "Mako-chan, at least wait until tomorrow, okay? He had a rough night and needs some rest."  
"What? Why?" Ranma asked, obviously confused. He DID need rest, but didn't see how an introduction and short conversation would make much of a difference.  
"Hmm? What was he out doing?" Makoto asked, genuinely curious. She had seen Ranma go head-to-head with the cyborg that had wiped the floor with her in her Senshi form, so she was understandably curious as to what he considered a "rough night".  
"We'll tell you all about it tomorrow. For now, just get some rest, okay?" The blonde cyborg asked before reactivating sleep mode and shutting her eyes. Ranma shrugged and settled back down onto the couch.  
Makoto frowned. "But why can't-"  
_Bam!_ The sound of the window being forced open cut off Makoto, and Ranma and Usagi both sat up sharply at the sudden noise.

Both relaxed considerably when Sailor Mars clumsily tumbled through the window, mumbling irritably under her breath as she stood up on the carpet and dusted off her legs.  
Makoto stared at the fire Senshi with wide eyes, and then her head snapped back toward Ranma. Though she noticed that he seemed entirely uninterested, she started to sweat nervously as she did her best to look absolutely shocked.  
"Wh-Why look! It's Sailor Mars! I can't believe it! What on Earth could you be doing here, in my best friend's dorm?"  
It's a good thing Ami was asleep at the time (with her communicator buried under a pile of dismantled first-generation N-Gages, in case inquiring minds want to know) or she would have had choice words about the nerve of people criticizing HER acting several days previous.  
Mars rolled her eyes. "Don't worry about it, Mako-chan. He already knows who we are."  
Ranma blinked in surprise, and then glanced at the ponytailed girl hesitantly before turning back to Mars. "Wait, so is she a Senshi too?"  
Sailor Mars blinked. Then she blinked again.  
"Son. Of. A. BITCH!!"  
_Wham! Wham!_ "Hey, some people are trying to sleep around here! Keep it down!" Came the muffled banging and shouting from the room above. Mars seriously considered blasting a hole in the ceiling out of sheer frustration.  
Makoto did not look pleased. "Smooth, Mars. REAL smooth."  
"Oh, shut up," the raven-haired Senshi murmured. "Getting back to the POINT, what happened back there? I thought you two were goners."  
Ranma sighed and shifted into sitting position. "Well, I guess we nearly were, but..." he trailed off, and glanced at the head of blonde hair buried in a pillow across the room. "What about her? Is she a Senshi? You all live together?"  
"Some other time!" Sailor Mars hissed. "And be more careful about saying things like that! People could be listening in!"  
"Okay, fine, I get it," Ranma mumbled. "Anyway, we had backup. They arrived in time to turn the tables on the bloodsuckers. We got 'em."  
The fire Senshi frowned. "Hold it. Your 'backup' turned the tables on something like thirty-plus vampires? You were surrounded!"  
Ranma shrugged. "Eh. They weren't that tough."  
"How many people were backing you up?" Mars asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "The entire building had been leveled by the time I got back there."  
"Two," Ranma said simply, not at all put off by Mars' raised eyebrow. "Junko and Snake."  
"Snake? Where?" Minako said suddenly, attempting to bolt upright and instead accidentally rolling off the side of her bed. "Guwah!" _Thump!_  
_Wham! Wham!_ "Hey! I'm serious! I've got tests tomorrow!" Came the voice from above.  
Mars sighed. "Well, it seems you got out okay, so I guess we can call it a night." She hesitated, staring down at Ranma and letting a slight flush tint her face. "And... uh... I should apologize," she mumbled. "I knew how Nagase-kun felt about your department and that she'd probably make a spectacle out of meeting a DAPC officer and I let her know who you were without thinking about the consequences. I'm sorry." She held her hands over her waist demurely and bowed, deeply impressing everyone in the room who could appreciate how rare Rei's apologies were.  
Minako frowned as she rubbed her head. "What's going on? Why is Rei-chan apologizing? Why is that guy from the park here? Where's Snake?"  
Mars' eyebrow twitched, and she decided not to chastise Minako for using her civilian name when she wasn't aware that Ranma was in the loop (given her own miserable record for keeping their identities from him so far). "Oh, go back to sleep."  
Makoto slowly smiled at the disgruntled fire Senshi, and scooted over to Usagi before leaning over to whisper. "You know, I do believe our fiery little friend has a bit of a crush."  
Makoto hadn't said this quietly enough to escape Mars' ears, and she damn well knew it. As Ranma fought back a yawn, oblivious, Sailor Mars' face colored further, and she stalked haughtily back toward the window. "That's enough out of you. We need to get some rest and talk about this tomorrow, okay?"  
Minako climbed back into bed, sat down on her mattress, and then crossed her arms over her chest, frowning at the pigtailed man. "Okay, I can accept that Snake isn't here, but seriously, WHY is Saotome-san here?"  
Mars stopped in her tracks and whirled around. "That is an EXCELLENT question," she said firmly. While she wouldn't be surprised to find the pigtailed officer in Makoto's company at night, he was currently in a different dorm room, fully clothed, and resting on the couch. And while she could only expect her taller friend to go about changing that with all haste, it begged the question of what he was doing there in the first place.  
Ranma, for his part, simply yawned. "Bodyguard duty." He pointed to Usagi, and then shifted his position on the couch once more, so that he was again lying on his back.  
Usagi chuckled nervously as the other girls stared at her, clearly weighing the situation in their minds.  
Mars turned back to the police officer. "Bodyguard duty, huh? Is that some excuse to keep tabs on her all the time?"  
"Yup," Ranma replied without hesitation.  
Makoto sweatdropped. "Uh... I think you're supposed to lie about that. Or at least spin it a little so it doesn't sound like government intrusion."  
"I've never been good at that stuff," Ranma mumbled, letting his eyes fall closed as he relaxed. "Usagi's been targeted by terrorists, and we need to make sure she doesn't get recaptured or controlled or whatever. So that's why I'm here."  
Mars' eye twitched. "We don't NEED government agents hanging around to keep us safe. We are the Sailor frikkin' Senshi, saviors of the planet, defenders of love and justice, etcetera etcetera. We can protect ourselves, thanks."  
Ranma opened one eye and tilted his head to look at her. "... How's your head? I've taken hits from Igov before; his elbow strike could probably bust open a safe. You recovering okay?"  
Makoto winced. "Aaaand there goes **that** love interest," she said wryly. 'Oh well. Less clutter on the runway for yours truly!'  
"Look here, you arrogant little punk," the fire Senshi said through clenched teeth, and plainly ignoring the fact that Ranma was definitely older than her, "don't get smug with me because you kicked around some foreign tin man who caught us off-guard!"  
Usagi gulped, and was about to interject a plea on Ranma's behalf, but Ranma was just as quick with his mouth as he was with his fists.  
"Can I be smug about killing more than half of the vampires in that club pretty much by myself before any bombs went off?" Ranma asked, fighting off a yawn.  
"No!" Mars said immediately. "You may be good for a police officer, but we-"  
_Wham! Wham! WHAM!_ "I'm serious!" Said the voice from above, now sounding perfectly enraged. "Shut UP!! I'm trying to sleep! If you morons keep shouting, I'm calling the cops!"  
Sailor Mars clenched her teeth and balled her hands into fists, mentally torn between giving up and going home, or committing acts of terrible violence to vent her frustration.  
Ranma frowned up at the ceiling, and then hopped up off the couch. "Well, duty calls. Excuse me, ladies." Before the red-skirted girl could organize her angry thoughts well enough to protest... whatever was currently happening, Ranma had reached the window Mars had entered through, hopped onto the window sill, and then jumped up out of sight.  
Minako frowned again. "Wait... why did he just go out the window?"  
"Why haven't you done anything but ask inane questions since you woke up for no reason?" Mars countered hotly, causing the blonde girl to pout grumpily.  
"Listen, Rei-chan," Usagi began gently, getting up out of bed and placing her hand on Mars' shoulder. "I know you're just worried for me, but it's okay. I trust Ranma-san."  
"You trust **everybody**," the fire Senshi snapped back, though it was hard to make such a statement sound especially accusatory.  
"I believe in Ranma-san," Usagi said resolutely, in that rare tone of hers that simply doesn't stand for argument. "He wants to help us. If something bad happens, he'll do the right thing."  
Mars was silent for a long moment, though her expression didn't soften. "And what if doing the 'right thing' involves taking you out before the enemy gets a hold of you?"  
Usagi winced. "Well... I still think..."  
"Not to interrupt this dramatic conversation," Makoto said suddenly, "but did anyone else just hear a thumping noise?"  
Minako raised her hand. "I thought it was that guy from the room above again, but it was much lighter this time."  
Before speculation could continue, Ranma swung back into the room through the window, idly dusting off his pants as he walked back to the couch and laid back down.  
Sailor Mars frowned. "So... what happened up there?"  
"He registered a complaint," Ranma said, shifting from side to side to get comfortable, "and then I helped him get to sleep."  
Silence greeted his explanation, which suited the pigtailed cop just fine as he crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.  
Makoto leaned over to whisper into Mars' ear. "Look, if you're not gonna want him, let me know now, okay? 'Cause I will be ALL OVER that."  
The fire Senshi's eye twitched. "Do what you want," she snapped as a bright glow enveloped her and then vanished, leaving her in her street clothes, apparently careless of Ranma's presence. "I'm going to bed. This whole evening's just been one disaster after another." She stalked out of the room, obviously still upset, but no longer having a clear focus for her frustration.

Usagi sighed and fell back onto her pillow as Minako crawled back under her covers across the room.  
She hadn't really thought about the possibility of being attacked and recaptured by the people who had converted her into a cyborg. It was rather difficult to imagine, considering that she had exactly three faces to associate with the "terrorist army" that was supposedly responsible. She supposed a final showdown with the redheaded android was probably to be expected, but other than that...  
Usagi sat up again. "Mako-chan, seriously. Not tonight, okay?"  
Makoto pouted and pulled her shirt back down from where she had been preparing to join the sleeping pigtailed man on the couch. "Hmph. I'm surrounded by prudes," she mumbled under her breath, giving the man on a couch a final, long stare before following Rei out the door.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Snake whistled happily to himself as he flipped through the wad of yen notes he had collected one last time before bundling them and adding them to the small pile of other cash bundles to the left of his breakfast (steak and eggs with orange juice, of course). On the other side of his breakfast was a mound of wallets and pocketbooks, all of them bereft of cash but still containing identification, credit cards, and pictures.  
"Sometimes I really do wonder just how different my job is from that of a career criminal," Snake said to himself as he dropped the last wad of yen notes and started cutting his steak.  
He was just washing down his first bite of breakfast with his juice when the door to the living room swung open, and Junko staggered into the kitchen, blinking rapidly as she held a small quilt around her body.  
"'Morning," Snake said evenly as he put his juice down. He then started cutting off another piece of steak.  
Junko stared at the American, and her brow furrowed. "Wait... I'm at YOUR house? I thought this place seemed kind of familiar, but..." she glanced around the kitchen. "Urm... would you happen to know why I'm here? Or why there's some teenage geek sleeping on your couch?"  
"I can make probable guesses at both," Snake deadpanned, making a mental note to burn the couch later. "Did you know that Akina doesn't have enough of your memories to figure out how to get home on her own?"  
Junko's eyes widened slightly. "She doesn't? Oh..." Then her eyes narrowed. "OH. I see. Did you hit me over the head again when I wasn't looking?" She asked accusingly.  
"Nope. You were looking right at me at the time," Snake responded before putting another chunk of steak in his mouth.  
The redhead scowled at him. "I wish you wouldn't do that."  
"Akina-san does not echo your sentiments."  
Before the discussion could heat up further, a timid voice came from the room behind Junko.  
"M-M-Mistress? May I l-leave now? Please?"  
Junko glanced back toward the living room. "Hmmm... no. Might as well take one for the road, while you're here." She let the quilt fall to the floor as she walked back where she came from. "Hey, Snake, do you think you can make us something to eat before we take off? Thanks!" She closed the door behind her.  
'Forget the couch. The entire room will need to be purged with fire,' the Texan decided as he rolled his eyes and got up to make more eggs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Okay, it's a brand new day, we're all up and rested," Makoto said eagerly as Rei sat down in the chair next to her around the coffee table, "so let's get the scoop!"  
Ami looked nervous as she cradled a cup of coffee in her hands. "Will this 'scoop' explain why Saotome-san is apparently living in our dorm now?" She kept glancing at the man uneasily, though she was probably more disturbed by the pieces of a 13mm. pistol that were spread out in front of him as he cleaned them than she was by Ranma himself.  
"Yes, it will," Usagi reassured her. The genius Senshi had been VERY perturbed to find Ranma on the couch that morning, being the only one that hadn't woken up the previous night.  
Usagi frowned at Rei, who was already staring stubbornly at Ranma, who was ignoring her as he cleaned his gun. "Did you bring Luna and Artemis?" She asked.  
Luna and Artemis didn't live with their "owners," as the dorms had a strict "no pets" policy, though it wasn't uncommon for the moon cats to sneak in for a few nights at a time. Normally they stayed with Rei, who lived in an apartment close to the campus and could facilitate them easily.  
"No. If I'd brought them, they'd be all over you as soon as they saw him, and we wouldn't get anything done," Rei explained, nudging her chin toward Ranma. "Particularly Luna; she's going to freak out over this. And I'm not sure if we should be letting Saotome-san in on every aspect of our little group."  
Ranma shrugged in response, putting down the firing pin and dabbing a rag once again with oil. "That's fine; I don't need to know everything about you or who you associate with. Though if these Luna and Artemis people are Senshi, or some kinda superheroes like you guys, it'd be nice not to have any big surprises spring up anywhere."  
Makoto snickered. "Then don't worry about it; they're pretty far from superheroes, I'd say."  
"Okay then," Usagi started, taking a deep breath. "Everybody, this is Ranma Saotome, an officer of the... uh... what do you call it, again?"  
"Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment," Ranma said as he put the rag down and started reassembling his gun. "Most people just call it the DAPC, or just the DA."  
"Right. That," Usagi continued. "Ranma-san, you know me and that I used to be Sailor Moon, and apparently you already know that Rei-chan is Sailor Mars." She pointed to Makoto. "This is Makoto Kino, Sailor Jupiter..."  
The brunette smiled and winked at him suggestively.  
Usagi pointed to Minako. "Minako Aino, Sailor Venus..."  
The blonde with the red bow in her hair waved pleasantly from where she was gathering food for breakfast.  
"... And this is Ami Mizuno, Sailor Mercury," Usagi finished, placing her arm on the genius Senshi's shoulder.  
"Are you sure it's okay to let him know who we are?" Ami asked timidly, not making eye contact with the pigtailed man.  
"Little late for that," Makoto said, shooting a meaningful glance at Rei before she shrugged. "Besides, we can trust you, can't we Ranma-kun?" She smiled and leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table as she propped up her chin.  
"Sure ya can," Ranma answered easily, sliding the final piece of his sidearm into place. "You can trust me with anything!"  
"Please excuse us for not taking your word for it," Rei deadpanned, her arms crossed over her chest. "We have to be careful about who we tell our secrets to, and you and your... friends down at crazy cop central don't seem like safe bets."  
"What're you, kidding?" Ranma chuckled. "I know they don't give the best first impression, but our guys are the best out there! There's nobody more trustworthy!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

(Back at HQ)  
Kyle blinked as he scanned the list of profiles before him, and shook his head before turning around in his seat.  
"Hey, Tiro! Did you know that we have the Sailor Senshi's identities listed here in the encrypted archives?"  
Tiro didn't glance up from where he was studying a copy of Victoria's Secret with fierce intensity. "Really. So, we know all their names, addresses, and whatnot?"  
The blonde man nodded. "Yup! They even have pictures here!"  
"Are any of them naked?" the lecher asked, still not looking up from the magazine.  
Kyle frowned and scrolled down the screen. "... Nope."  
"Then stop bugging me."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Again, I'm not going to take your word for it," Rei said firmly. "Usagi-chan's the type to trust a fox to guard a henhouse. But you're going to have to EARN that kind of trust from me. And let me tell you, being thrown in jail wasn't the best place to start along that path."  
Ranma blinked. Twice. "Wait... you were in jail? For what?"  
"Some bull about burning a storefront without a license, or something," Minako muttered, taking out some bread from the pantry and walking over to the toaster.  
"And... you're saying that we should just let people burn down stores whenever they want?" Ranma asked, quirking an eyebrow.  
Rei scowled. "You could make an exception for us!"  
"I'm pretty sure that's exactly what we did," Ranma deadpanned. "Unless you're telling me you're out on bail right now."  
"We're getting a bit off-track here," Makoto interjected before Rei could come up with a retort. "Ranma-kun, why don't you explain exactly what your job is while you're here."  
"Well, to put it simply, I'm supposed to protect Usagi-chan," Ranma said, shrugging. "She tells me that you're planning to assault a Freedom's Angel base to find one of their leaders, Alexandra Tokima. If something goes wrong, the Angels could re-capture her. I'm here to prevent that, and help out with the mission if possible."  
Ami raised an eyebrow. "I see... what, exactly, do you specialize in, Saotome-san?"  
"Kicking things, mostly," Ranma said with a self-satisfied expression as he leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. "Sometimes I shoot them, too."  
"Law enforcement has gotten a lot more intense since we were younger, it would seem," Rei said dryly. "When did they get rid of all that 'due process' stuff?"  
"Have you ever BEEN to trial?" Ranma asked distastefully. "I'd rather fight vampires than argue with lawyers."  
Minako poked Usagi in the shoulder, still holding her bread, and effectively interrupting the conversation. "Uhm, Usagi-chan? The toaster's broken..."  
Usagi looked up at the other blonde, uncomprehending. "So... you want ME to fix it? Ami-chan's right there, you know."  
"I'm a doctor, not a mechanic," Ami mumbled as she sipped her coffee.  
Minako looked flustered by the response, but still seemed determined as she held up her bread. "Well, if you can fix it, sure, but... well... can't you do it yourself?"  
Usagi's expression went flat. "You want me to toast your bread?"  
"If you wouldn't mind..."  
The cyborg crossed her arms under her breasts. "What makes you think I even have a toas-"  
"In the back, between the shoulder blades," Ami said suddenly after swallowing up more coffee. "Usagi-chan should be able to open a pair of slots there. They use the vector thrusters for heat."  
Usagi twitched as Minako started pulling back on her shirt collar and poking around on her back. "This is humiliating."  
"Oh, stop whining and just open up," Rei muttered as she poured herself some coffee.  
Usagi pouted as a soft whirring noise came from her back, and Minako brightened as she slipped her bread down into her friend's back.  
"Getting back on-topic, here," Makoto started, shaking her head at the sight of Usagi being used as a common household appliance, "you said you were fighting... what? Vampires? Are you serious?"  
Ranma nodded somberly. "Over the past few weeks we've had a steep increase in the number of disappearances, seemingly unmotivated homicides, and small zombie infestations. On a few cases we've managed to track down a few of the perpetrators, which turned out in each case to be young adult vampires."  
Rei frowned. "Huh... Tsuna was right on the money, then. But where did these things COME from?"  
"Well, obviously, the vampires we've fought so far came from other vampires," Ranma said, leaning his chair back as he stared up at the ceiling. "The problem is... well... as far as we can tell, vampires have always been around Tokyo."  
_PFFFT!_ Ami immediately started choking after spewing her coffee out all over the table.  
Ranma sweatdropped. "You seem surprised..."  
"Of _Hack!_ COURSE I'm surprised!" Ami said, coughing a few more times as Makoto smacked her in the back. "You're telling me _Gasp!_ that these monsters have been around for as long as your department?"  
"Yup. Supposedly they're real sneaky bastards normally," Ranma explained, scratching his head. "They kept to themselves, did everything to hide from authorities, didn't kill more than they needed, and chose targets that wouldn't be missed. Vampire encounters were so rare that there was a lot of speculation even in OUR records that they really might be myths. But recently there's been... I don't really know... some kind of EXPLOSION in the vampire population. The night club we assaulted last night was literally set up as a sort of vampire factory to churn 'em out as quickly as possible."  
He shook his head. "On top of that, it wasn't that well defended or particularly secretive. We found it on a tip, but even if we hadn't gotten the tip, that place couldn't have stayed open for more than a week without somebody realizing something was fishy."  
'Actually, somebody already had noticed,' Rei thought to herself as she took another sip of coffee. 'Good thing Saotome was there, too. I'm not sure if I could've saved Tsuna myself.'  
"So they've begun to come out of the shadows, so to speak?" Makoto asked, frowning.  
"I don't think it's even that," Ranma said, letting his chair fall forward again as he sat up straight. "They haven't been inviting conflict or anything; it's just that the vampires we've run into keep making mistakes. It's like there are so many of them now, and they're so inexperienced, that they can't all hide effectively." He frowned suddenly. "Have you noticed that there are a lot less homeless people on the streets nowadays?"  
THAT sent a cold chill through all of those present.  
"R-Really?" Minako asked nervously. "Uh... are y-you sure it's not just... well... the shelters taking in more, or..."  
"Nah. We've been getting reports from frightened workers from the shelters sayin' how less and less people keep showing up every night. A lot of the surviving people refuse to leave, even in the daytime. Nobody knows what's happening." Ranma seemed more troubled by the situation than disturbed, which the Senshi guessed was an appropriate attitude when he was dealing with this matter directly.  
Ami shuddered. "But... following the logical conclusion... after the vampires run out of easy victims..."  
"Exactly." Ranma sighed, running a hand through his hair. "And though it's much easier to track a vampire coming from a mysterious homicide than from a missing persons report, if things start getting that bad..."  
_Ding! Clunk!_  
The seriousness of the situation was utterly shattered as a bulge appeared beneath Usagi's shirt on her back, and Minako blinked and reached down into her friend's collar. "Oh! The toast's done! Aww... Usagi, you burnt it!"  
A vein popped up on Usagi's head, and she made a mental query as to the lower settings available for her taser module.  
Ami slid her coffee away, the earlier discussion having sharpened her state of mind more than the bitter stimulant could ever manage. "We HAVE to do something about this. We can't let these monsters roam about unchecked any longer."  
"You don't need to; we can handle it," Ranma insisted, waving his hand dismissively. "Besides, don't you have enough on your plate with the whole terrorist deal?"  
"We have to fight injustice and darkness everywhere, not just where it affects us," Makoto insisted proudly, standing up and pressing a fist against her chest. "We'll do whatever we can to help!"  
"Now wait just a darned minute," Rei grumped, leaning forward. "I'm all for blasting vampires, but I'm not crazy about the idea of working with the police."  
"Oh, come on," Makoto said, her voice suddenly smooth as silk as she scootched over to Ranma and placed a hand on his shoulder. "You have to admit that they're not ALL bad... I could get used to the idea of working... closely... with Ranma-kun here..."  
Ranma, being as oblivious to innuendo as he was, would have been the only man within one hundred miles to take that statement at face value... if it weren't for Makoto's hand slipping down off his shoulder and across his back, her fingers dancing across his muscles roughly as she felt him over.  
"Eh... heh heh... _Gulp!_" Ranma swallowed nervously as the brunette continued to feel him up, grinning down at him the whole time. "I, uh... thanks?"  
"That's great, but what about the OTHER problem with this little bodyguard arrangement?" Rei deadpanned.  
Usagi raised an eyebrow. "What problem?"  
"She may be referring to a... uh... male police officer standing guard in a girl's dormitory," Ami said with an embarrassed glance at Ranma. "No offense, Saotome-san."  
"None taken. I get that sort of thing a lot," Ranma mumbled, still sweating slightly from Makoto massaging his shoulder.  
"What's wrong with that?" Minako asked, chomping down the last of her overcooked toast. When Rei glared at her, the blonde rolled her eyes. "Oh, grow up. Can't we deal with a situation as serious as terrorist abduction without worrying that our bodyguard might walk in on us in the shower?"  
Makoto grinned even wider. "Of course, if he makes Ami-chan uncomfortable, we could always make... OTHER sleeping arrangements..." She purred, her hand working even faster on Ranma's back.  
Ranma's face flushed as Makoto's hand slid to the side and seemed to be making its way under his arm. "A-Actually, I r-really should stay with Usagi. 'Cause... you know... she's the target?"  
"But you don't KNOW that," Makoto said brightly. "What if they want to turn more of us into cyborgs? You'd want to be close by so you could save me... wouldn't you?"  
He started sweating more. The brunette's hand was under his arm now, feeling his tensed pectorals. A quick glance at the other girls in the room didn't seem to bring any hope of rescue. Minako looked quite interested in the exchange, Rei had turned away, disgusted, and Ami and Usagi had flushed and were looking elsewhere.  
"Wait! Aren't most of the Senshi living here, though? So I should definitely stay here in case that's true!" Ranma pointed out.  
Unfortunately, Makoto wasn't nearly so interested in a logical discussion of where Ranma was going to stay. "Yeah, whatever. My room's close enough to here anyway. Let me show you!" She tried to drag Ranma out of his chair, only to stop short and nearly lose her balance as she found herself attempting to move the entire dining room table along with her victim, which jolted from the movement.  
Ranma's fingers dug into the wooden surface of the table as he pleaded with the women across from him silently, and Makoto frowned at the unexpected resistance.  
Finally, Usagi decided Makoto was being a little too pushy and decided to come to Ranma's rescue; she didn't really care if the Thunder Senshi nailed Ranma ragged, and would have been overjoyed to see her bodyguard have a real relationship within her circle of friends, but Makoto was letting her libido run wild more than usual, and it was clearly making Ranma uncomfortable.  
"Ranma-san, I know there's not much food here, so why don't you go down to the cafeteria and get yourself something to eat?" Usagi said suddenly, getting up from her seat and pointing to the door.  
Ranma brightened immediately and nodded, standing up himself to go. His nervousness returned full force when a pair of arms wrapped around one of his, with a pillowy pair of breasts pressing against his bicep.  
"I can show you the way! We'll make a date out of it!" Makoto cooed, glad that Usagi had thoughtfully gotten him to release his iron grip on the table. She began to drag him out the door again.  
_Whrrr... Clang!_ Makoto yelped as a metal claw suddenly latched onto her arm and yanked her back, breaking her hold on Ranma. Looking back, her eyes bugged out as she saw Usagi staring at her firmly with her normal arms crossed over her chest, and a third servo arm extending out of her shoulderblade to restrain the taller girl.  
"Now Mako-chan, leave Ranma be for now. We have things to discuss HERE, don't we?" Usagi asked. Ranma, apparently unfazed by the appearance of the new appendage, bolted out the door.

Makoto slumped at seeing her newest piece of meat escape out the door. "I don't know, DO we?" she asked irritably of Usagi.  
Rei rolled her eyes and leaned back as she polished off her cup of coffee. "Mako-chan, I'll admit that he's not a bad catch, but show some propriety, would you? Hell, if Ami-chan wasn't here, you probably would have started undressing him right then and there."  
Ami blinked and thought hard about that, wondering if she should be pleased that her friends were sensitive to her embarrassment, or irritated that they thought of her as a little girl to be protected from the sight of sexual conduct.  
Minako shrugged. "You WERE coming on a little strong. He doesn't seem that easy, you know?"  
Makoto pouted. "I just figured that he deserved some kind of reward for his help in the park..."  
"Well, I'm sure he'd appreciate a simple 'thank you,'" Usagi lectured as the mechanical claw let go of Makoto's arm. "Besides, it IS his job to do that sort of thing."  
"I can't imagine he gets paid enough to fight freaks like that Igov guy," the brunette muttered. "Besides, did you SEE the way he moved when he was fighting? Imagine the sorts of things he could do in the sack!"  
Ami's face promptly began burning as she started doing just that. "I need a drink..."  
"Seriously though, if we can put aside the gossip for a minute, this vampire situation is serious," Rei said irritably. "I didn't get to see the battle, but I'm guessing there were a lot of those freaks in there. We have to find the root of this problem and put a stop to it."  
"Okay, but where do we start?" Minako asked.  
"Ranma can help!" Usagi said immediately. "Him and Snake found the night club by interrogating a vampire that they captured!"  
Rei noted the way Minako lit up at the mention of the American, and quickly moved to put down the idea. "We don't need the DAPC. I have my own lead on the vampires who found the club on the same night."  
"Was it that crazy girl who nearly got us killed?" Usagi deadpanned. "Ranma told me about that. She just heard he was DAPC, and she went nuts!"  
"Well... she has some issues," Rei admitted quietly. "But so do your police buddies! I don't want that nutcase Snake around!"  
"Ladies, ladies, let's calm down," Makoto said gently, placing a hand on Rei and Usagi's respective shoulders. "Look, by ourselves, we've got nothing, right? We might as well go out combing graveyards for all we know about hunting vampires. So I figure we shouldn't be turning away any info we can get, no matter WHERE it comes from."  
"That's fine, but Saotome at least is going to want to tag along with us when we go out to take care of these things," Rei fumed.  
"So? What's wrong with that? He's really good at killing vampires," Usagi protested.  
Makoto just grinned. "If you want Ranma-kun out of the way, you just let me know. I'll keep him... occupied."  
Minako snickered. "Okay, so now we have to assault a terrorist hideout and then a vampire lair. Anything else?"  
"Yeah," Usagi mumbled, suddenly looking tired. "Tests. I'll see you guys later, okay?" As the other girls nodded and mumbled goodbye, Usagi grabbed a notebook and headed toward the door.  
"Usagi..." Rei said, her eyebrow twitching.  
"Yes?"  
"The arm?" The raven-haired girl pointed to the servo arm that was still extending out of the blonde cyborg's back and curving over her shoulder.  
Usagi flushed and the robotic appendage slipped back into her shoulderblade, vanishing into a narrow slip of space that shouldn't have been able to hold that much volume in the first place. Without a word, the ponytailed girl was out the door.

Rei was about to take another sip of coffee, when she blinked and jerked her head back to the door. "Wait, where's she going?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"And THAT'S how American military might conquered Communism, and brought peace and prosperity back to the poor, wretched, non-American countries of the world," Snake said proudly, watching as his student scrawled down the last collection of notes in her notebook.  
Sitting next to Usagi was Ranma and Kyle, the latter of whom was there because he really had nothing better to do.  
"Wow. I've never heard the Vietnam War described like that," Kyle muttered, scratching his head. "Usually people talk about it like it was some sort of big embarrassment and failure on the part of the U.S."  
"LIES!!" Snake snarled, leaning forward. "We only left because the Vietcong were too weak to sate our battle-lust! America has never lost a war, and never will!"  
Ranma rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay, now shut up. Does that cover today's lesson?"  
"Yeah, that should just about do it," the Texan decided. "Though I still think you should memorize a list of all the American presidents."  
"You also think we should hire her as a fridge," Ranma deadpanned.  
"Not JUST as a fridge. I'm sure she has other useful appliances," Snake reasoned.  
Usagi sweatdropped. "Well... apparently I can do toast..."  
Ranma leaned back out of Usagi's peripheral vision, and then stiffly shook his head no while mouthing "No good, no good!" silently.

"Anyway, I'm really grateful for the help, but I'm kind of nervous about my English class," Usagi said, sighing. "Ami and Minako are both really good at English, but I'm hopeless, and between my lessons here and our planning against the terrorists and the vampires and everything..." she rubbed her head as she trailed off. "It's awful! Rei-chan even suggested we start going out on PATROLS again! I can't DEAL with that during midterms!"  
Kyle smiled. "I can teach you English!"  
Ranma and Snake both did spit-takes at the exclamation, and fought off the ensuing laughter as Kyle pouted.  
"What? It's true! I'm really good at English!"  
"Commander... Kyle... buddy..." Ranma said gently as he patted the taller man on the shoulder, "You're the dumbest guy in our department. You don't know ANYTHING."  
"Academically speaking, it's a miracle you didn't take the short bus to school every day," Snake said, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. "Hell, if you stuttered a bit more when you talked, you could probably qualify for disability!"  
"Hey! That's really mean, you guys!" Usagi protested angrily, having flashbacks to being teased and insulted constantly by her own peers back in high school.  
Kyle just frowned, being much less sensitive to criticisms of his intellect than Usagi could have imagined. "But I'm really good at speaking, right? And that's why! I have great language skills! I always scored high in all my writing and speech classes, Japanese **and** English!"  
Ranma and Snake sobered slightly, sensing that their superior officer was being serious in defending this new area of competence.  
"So, what, you got good grades in Junior High or something?" Snake asked, raising an eyebrow.  
Kyle drew himself up proudly and smiled. "Before my dad talked me into joining the police academy, I took two years of college as a language and fine arts major! I still thumb through my old European poetry notebook on occasion!"  
"Even so, it's kind of a waste," Ranma said, not quite buying Kyle's endorsement of his English. "I mean, Snake's a native speaker. Can't he just teach her along with the history lessons?"  
"Booooooring," Snake said, drawing out the word as he leaned back and brought his feet up onto the table. "I'm not teaching Tsukino-kun anything that doesn't have to do with why America is great. If Tekai can do it, let him do it." Then he glanced at the blond man. "You CAN speak English fluently, can't you?" He said, switching the language in question.  
Kyle grinned back at him. "Do not have concern, Mister! All is fine in my hands!" He said back in English.  
There was silence for several moments as Ranma and Usagi waited for Snake to confirm or rebuke Kyle's grasp of the language in question (having understood none of it themselves).  
"... Meh, good enough," Snake said, giving Kyle the thumbs-up.  
Usagi smiled and stood up before Kyle, bowing to him. "I'd very much appreciate your help, Tekai-san! Thank you!" Then she cocked her head to one side. "But where did you learn English, anyway? Just from your classes? Weren't those a long time ago?"  
"Yeah, but I get a lot of practice using it around my family," Kyle explained. "I'm one-fourth American. My grandfather and grandmother both immigrated after the war."  
Snake frowned. "You mean one of the grandfathers and grandmothers, I think. And wouldn't that make you half American?"  
Kyle stared back at him blankly. "Grandpa's half the what now?"  
"Don't ask him for help with math," Ranma murmured to Usagi, who sweatdropped and nodded in agreement.

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A day passed, and the citizens of Tokyo went about their business, the vast majority unaware and unconcerned with the various mortal threats that bubbled underneath the surface of calm routine and gentle prosperity that graced the Japanese capital.

Ironically, of those groups that were not so happily ignorant, it was the warriors and cowards of the DAPC, the force charged first and foremost with dealing with such threats that relaxed calmly with each other in perfect comfort while waiting for the next catastrophe to strike. Lesser men would have found themselves hard pressed to put substantial time and effort into helping a ditzy college student cram for mid-terms when there were bloodsucking monsters prowling about the city in packs, but that was simply the caliber of the DA's officers.  
Tokyo's finest indeed.

Across the city, hidden in steel labyrinths underneath corporate fortresses of glass and steel, an infamous Russian general emerged from his personal repair bay which, much to his annoyance, had been seeing more and more use as time passed.  
In a laboratory above him, a robotic monstrosity greedily sucked up energy as its systems slowly flickered to life, testing manipulators, engines, and energy projectors in preparation for war.

Opposite the DAPC headquarters from this factory of death, four girls started planning an assault in earnest as one amongst them typed furiously on her computer, running through the DAPC's databases in the hopes that it would reveal their enemy. A vital spot, a weak point, a conveniently isolated operation; every possible point of attack was considered for the purposes of maximum damage with minimal disturbance. For this was not a matter of defeating an invading army or annihilating a rampaging beast.  
No, the Senshi had a somewhat darker agenda on this occasion. Someone had attacked their princess, changed her, and then dropped her back into the Senshi's laps as if to show off his wonderful prank. And "someone" was going to pay dearly for their indiscretion.

Not too far from the meeting place of the Inner Senshi, a pair of lovers felt the dreadful chill of a parent just informed that their child may be in danger as an older woman nervously told them over the phone that their daughter had now officially been missing from her class group for a full twenty-four hours.  
The reassurance that school supervisors and local authorities were making every effort to find the girl did not comfort the two Outer Senshi, nor did it spare the poor woman informing them from any wrathful cursing from the more aggressive and outspoken of the pair.

Not too far from either groups of Senshi, a stunning businesswoman calmly sipped on fine alcohol as she read the troubling report that her assistant had just handed her.  
Evidently terrorist cells were disappearing, often in horribly bloody and mysterious ways. The woman's list of enemies was long indeed, but evidently there was a completely new threat to her admittedly (and in some cases literally) decaying forces.

Finally, as dusk passed over Tokyo and gave way to night, a single figure floated over the tops of Tokyo's skyscrapers, the myriad lights from the streets below occasionally peeking up from between the buildings to illuminate her ghostly pale face.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Long whips of silky fabric wafted behind the woman in the wind as she slowed her flight, approaching her destination at last. The penthouse apartment of Fujimata Suites towered over the adjacent buildings, affording it a great deal more privacy than that of the penthouses surrounding it.  
Of course, privacy was hardly at a premium at this particular property, as the complete lack of artificial light, combined with being shielded by its height from most of the light from the streets and buildings below kept the exposed, extravagant deck in near total darkness, spoiled only by the light of the moon and stars.  
The woman touched down on the edge of the property and walked forward, her stride firm and purposeful.  
This penthouse was of the stereotypical sort; a luxurious, stately property that screamed wealth. It was the sort of "rich man's bachelor pad" that old businessmen bought to impress and impregnate their girlfriends  
And despite the unusual nature of its occupants, the penthouse certainly gave that impression tonight. The darkness proved to be no impediment as the newcomer glanced over the other vampires gathered in and around the large heated pool. Bikini-clad women made up the majority; a testament to the apartment's male owner. Pale, silky flesh was on display everywhere, and the woman noted with mild distaste that some of the females had discarded their bathing suits entirely, or had already latched onto one of the few males and started screwing out in the open, much to the delight of the other participants.  
Far be it for her to complain, of course. Vampires were very carnal creatures by nature, and though they were much better known for their predatory habits than their sexual ones, the rush of power that followed the conversion to undeath almost always boosted one's libido fiercely.  
Over time, the rush of power one felt every time the sun went down tended to dwindle though, even as the vampire itself became stronger and stronger. Older vampires like herself had their egos and mannerisms tempered by over a century of experience and culture, and treated the young ones as they were: foolish, hormonal children who barely understood what they were, and were drunk with the power of undeath.  
Sighing, she stepped past the penthouse jacuzzi, trying to block out the screams and moans of the massive orgy coming from within it, the collection of bare flesh colliding and writhing like a perverse mosh pit.  
Entering the apartment proper, a pair of bulky-looking men in silk suits stepped up to her, looked her over, and then nodded their consent to her presence, turning their attention once more to the risque party taking place out on the deck.

"Ah. Kimiko. Welcome back."  
The woman stopped and bowed, her long platinum hair spilling down over her shoulders. "Master Ran. I've come to give my report."  
Before her laid what appeared to be a young man, perhaps not even in his twenties, with dazzling blonde hair and two shapely vampiresses in his lap. He regarded the newcomer with an air of impatient attention, as if he was only listening to what she had to say out of personal courtesy, rather than because she possessed information vital to the decisions he had to make.  
Kimiko had never really understood Ran; despite being the oldest and strongest vampire in Japan, he had always been... oddly enough... quite youthful, for a vampire. Unlike herself, and the men that Ran used as bodyguards, he had chosen to keep a young man's body down through the centuries, had maintained a more than healthy libido, and basically acted like the arrogant, foolish morons that were starting to get shot up around the city from making mistakes.  
Of course, Ran was neither foolish nor particularly arrogant; he had dozens of old, powerful vampires under his direct control, and far more humans under his heel, either through direct manipulation and hypnosis, or through his extensive financial dealings. He was smart, and never hesitated to use force when he could get away with it.  
Still, he was vain, cocky, and lecherous, and Kimiko honestly hated serving under him.  
Not that she had much of a choice, of course; she was one of the many vampires bound directly to his will.  
"Oh. Right. You had that raid on... something... how'd that go?" He asked, looking quite disinterested as he played with the breasts of his current bedmate.  
"Not very well, I'm afraid," Kimiko muttered, disappointed - as usual - that her master hadn't bothered to remember what was a rather important operation. "If you recall, two newly turned slew their master vampire and made a break from their new homes during the day. It seems they were... displeased with undeath." Most vampires tended to say that sentence as if it was a joke or a source of great irony. Kimiko did not. She had been undead long enough to know it wasn't all free power-ups and good times. It was rare and surprising whenever newly turned showed such foresight, but it did happen, and it was happening more often as the population of vampires increased.  
"They managed to make their way to a church, where they revealed their nature, and begged help of the priest there in front of the entire congregation." She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "As you can imagine, there was a great deal of panic and confusion with two vampires sobbing on the floor of a church, cowering under the cross and bemoaning the theft of their purity. This made things easier to take care of, but caused quite an uproar."  
"Go on," Ran said, looking slightly more interested, but in a manner that made it clear he didn't like what he was hearing.  
"When dusk settled we made short work of those inside the church, including the defectors, and also managed to hunt down all of those who had fled the church before we got there... we hope," she murmured.  
Ran blinked. "Oh. Good, then. It sounds like the mission was a complete success."  
Kimiko fought off the growl rising in her throat. It was moments like these that she really hated serving this man. "In order to destroy two traitors, we ended up killing thirty-three humans. Even after drinking ourselves fat, most of those individuals were left with blood still in their veins. Not only was it wasteful, but the sheer volume of the murders is far beyond any possibility of hiding. When the local authorities and the populace are already wary of increased disappearances at night, now is NOT the time to be killing off scores of humans left and right!"  
Ran's head swayed back and forth as he considered this, and one of the women in his arms cooed gently and kissed his neck to comfort him as she squeezed her body tighter against his side.  
"I suppose you're right," the vampire lord said, shrugging. "But what's to be done about it? We can't just stop killing defectors."  
"A more humanistic individual might suggest we stop spreading vampirism about like the flu," Kimiko said sarcastically. "And on that note, I bring news that I'm sure you'll agree is entirely bad; the Dark Hearts club has been leveled, as the rumors had guessed. The entire operation is a total loss."  
The elder vampire scowled, his pointed incisors poking down between his lips. "And just how did this happen?"  
"There were three survivors to the massacre. Of those, two were recently turned who had no idea what was going on at the time; when the explosions and gunshots started, their hosts left to defend the club, and they took the opportunity to make a break for it." She sighed wearily. "Needless to say, they weren't so pleased at being vampires after seeing a whole bastion of their new peers slaughtered. I had to destroy both of them after I was done questioning them. The third fellow was simply some coward who fled early. His account was slightly more helpful."  
Kimiko took a deep breath. "It seems the DAPC infiltrated the clubhouse. We're not sure how they found it, but apparently someone blew their cover during the operation, resulting in a battle that ended with the club in ruins." She frowned. "Evidently, they were also assisted by an odd character referring to herself as 'Cyber Moon'. Not sure what that's all about."  
One of the vampiresses caressing Ran started. "'Cyber' Moon? Any relation to that famous superheroine from down in Juuban?"  
"I haven't the slightest," Kimiko said, shrugging. Vampires had little to no direct conflict with Japanese demon hunters, as Japanese spirits tended either to cause far more uproar than the typical vampire, or stay rooted to a single area. The Sailor Senshi in particular were almost entirely reactionary, and tended to stumble upon hidden operations almost exclusively thanks to dumb luck. Unlike mundane authorities, who relied on experience, wit, and technical expertise to track their targets from the scene of the crime to wherever they might flee to.  
Midians were, or at least, used to be, masters of stealth and discretion, only using their formidable physical abilities for direct combat when they had no choice. And up until recently, they had neatly evaded Japan's most popular super heroines to the extent that the girls had no idea that vampires existed.  
"This is... most unfortunate," Ran mumbled, pushing the girls off of him as he stood up. "The prophet will not be pleased." He looked up at Kimiko. "What of Tsumoyatsu?"  
Kimiko shook her head. "Dead. Only the humans and those three I spoke of escaped." The eldest vampire to be stationed in the club - usually called the "Overseer," though he played the role of bartender - had clearly perished in the assault, as he would have been the first to report to his superiors had he survived.  
"Yes... MOST unfortunate. He was a good servant," Ran said regretfully. "Do you think that the other clubs are in danger of being discovered?"  
"I do," Kimiko deadpanned. "And so long as such places are in operation, ALL of our strongholds are in danger of being discovered."  
Ran rolled his eyes as he recognized the start of a long-running disagreement between them. "Kimiko, darling, calm yourself. These facilities are necessary if the prophet's plans are to come to fruition."  
"The prophet's plans appear less and less worthwhile with every incident," Kimiko hissed. "Look at us, Master! Have you seen what's happening down there? In the streets, our kind have taken to raiding homes and grabbing pedestrians out in the open to keep from starving! Our normal roosts are so overwhelmed with new bodies that they're in constant risk of discovery! Every day is spent in fear of a government search in our resting places, and now the authorities have taken to hunting us down in earnest! More and more of our 'new recruits' reject undeath and oppose us, trying to escape and warn others. We have completely abandoned the old ways, and-"  
"The old ways are useless to us," the vampiress who had spoken before when she heard the name Cyber Moon stood up, hands on her hips. "The prophet brings visions of a new world, where humanity gives way to our kind and the sun is blotted out of the sky once and for all! What are these trifling little problems compared to the reward he promises? That there are too many of us? That the humans might find out about us? So what?"  
"There is very troubling precedent for that sort of thing," Kimiko said evenly. "The midians' record for wars against humankind is something to the effect of zero-to-four. And the... children we're turning nowadays are far from being soldiers. They're clumsy, impulsive, and arrogant. More to the point, they're getting restless as prey becomes increasingly hard to catch and overcrowding raises tensions. These are problems our people have never had before, at a time when being discovered is more dangerous than ever."  
"Yet it must continue," Ran said softly, gazing out at the deck toward his undead brethren as he clutched his more talkative concubine close.  
"Master, this is ridiculous," Kimiko said wearily. "Our numbers grow too rapidly. In addition to the limitations of our food supply, most of the midians we have turning new vampires are less than a year dead," she pressed, using the common term for noting a vampire's age after conversion. "They hardly have the will and experience to control ghouls, much less other vampires. We grow increasingly dependent on the newly turned being enslaved to the minds of those that turned them at the same time that those minds are weaker than ever. Putting aside the severe cases of outright defection, fights are becoming all too commonplace."  
"It's the natural order of things," the vampiress from before said, and Kimiko mentally resolved to get her name for later; the tramp was obviously a junior midian if Kimiko had never really noticed her before, and needed to learn that slaves and concubines had no place in a discussion between elders. "Any expanding species or civilization experiences a few 'growing pains,' and the weak among us must be culled so that the strong prosper. Only THEN can we succeed and take our rightful place as the superior species."  
Kimiko's face twisted into a snarl. "Are you really so stupid?" She snapped, eager to silence the upstart. "We're nosferatu, not humans! We're not conquerors, we're not kings, and above all, we're NOT natural!" She sucked in some air through her teeth, her fangs having enlarged due to her irritation. "We're parasites. We cling to the underbelly of civilization and feed on humanity as best we can, knowing we'll be wiped out if we're ever found. And for millennia, we've managed to do so. And you, in your childish ignorance, would have us all tracked down and burned!"  
The vampiress bristled, though her response lacked significant heat; Kimiko didn't know her, but everyone close to Ran knew who Kimiko was and where she ranked on the power stepladder. "You can't be serious! Vampires are NOT just parasites! We're a noble, powerful species!"  
"That would depend on your definition of 'noble'," the platinum-tressed vampire mumbled, "and likely your definition of 'species' as well."  
"Enough of this," Ran said suddenly, having been silent as his underlings squabbled. "Kimiko, you may be right... but it doesn't matter."  
Gently pushing aside the vampiress who was arguing with his lieutenant, the vampire lord regarded Kimiko with a firm, yet somewhat regretful expression.  
"I'm tired of it, Kimiko. Sick and tired of the hiding. The secrecy. Constantly walking on eggshells and living in fear of discovery." He scowled, his fangs lengthening. "I want to put a stop to it. Make it so that the strong need no longer fear the weak, and finally let the humans know their place, once and for all."  
His mouth twisted into a grin as he said this, and Kimiko wasn't surprised to see the other vampires in the room grinning as well as Ran's two concubines looked up at him in adoration.  
"Bolder words have been spoken by more powerful vampire lords," Kimiko said simply. "All are now piles of dust gathered around silver stakes."  
"The prophet says-"  
"To Hell with the prophet!" Kimiko snapped. "What is this creature, who orders about midians like common underlings, who tosses aside our safety as inconsequential in the face of some alleged revolution? Why does that... that MORTAL command such respect? What makes you think he can help you succeed where so many have failed, when all he's done so far is create confusion and turmoil?"  
The vampiress from before glared at her. "Do not speak ill of the prophet. While you scurry around with your petty tasks and complain about minor inconveniences, the prophet works tirelessly to plan for our future and warn us of danger."  
Kimiko stiffened. "Preventing the slow and systematic annihilation of our kind is a 'petty task'? The deaths of dozens of young vampires is a 'minor inconvenience'?" She glared coldly as the younger vampire wilted. "Perhaps Lord Ran would stand for the 'minor inconvenience' of having you gutted here and now; he has no shortage of women to sate his urges. I'm sure you wouldn't be missed."  
"Kimiko, STOP," Ran demanded, his eyes suddenly flaring a bright crimson within his pupils.  
The vampiress hadn't actually moved, so she merely closed her mouth and stared expressionlessly at her master, forcing herself not to flinch as her master's presence filled her head near to bursting with the psychic pulse that had accompanied the command.

Ran waited a moment to check the reactions of those around him. His more talkative concubine was currently clutching his leg, shivering as she pressed her face into his shoulder. His bodyguards, naturally, were all in their usual positions, all pretending as if they hadn't heard a thing; they wouldn't have moved to stop a vampire as high-ranking as Kimiko without a direct order, unless she was lunging for Ran himself. The activity out on the porch hadn't stopped, though many of his guests were peering into his lounge curiously. It wasn't every day that the local vampire lord had someone yelling at him, after all.  
"Kimiko..." he finally said, relaxing once again as he held the woman in his arms up against his body. "Double security around our remaining little 'vampire factories'. Equip them with weapons should they need them."  
"So in the interest of security, we're to make our strongholds MORE conspicuous?" She asked tiredly. Normally she wouldn't dare be this rebellious in tone, but the recent verbal scuffle had left her more frustrated than ever.  
Ran ignored the comment. "Your other task is to hunt down and slaughter this 'DAPC'," he said angrily. "Teach them the consequences of their foolish resistance."  
Kimiko was silent for a long moment. "Master... you understand that this is no simple task you ask of me..."  
"I requested the slaughter of a group of human upstarts," Ran said, incensed that his servant dared to question his orders. "How is this complicated?"  
"The DAPC is at least reasonably skilled at combating our kind; a direct confrontation may be unwise," she said uneasily.  
Ran snorted. "I suppose I didn't make myself clear: You WILL find these filthy mortals, and you will MASSACRE them, Kimiko. I will accept no cowardice from my servants. Now get out of my sight!" His eyes flashed as he swept his arm to the side.  
The platinum-tressed midian twitched, then whirled around, stalking out of the room in a tightly controlled fury.

Ran watched her go, and then sighed as he hugged both his current lovers against his body. "What a pitiful shell she's become. When I first came to Japan she was so lively... so wild..." He smirked. "Not to mention quite a handful in the sack. Such a shame to lose that passion."  
"Forget about her, Master," the more talkative of his concubines said soothingly as she reached behind her back to untie her bikini top. "You don't need her. We're here for you now."  
Ran's grin nearly split his face as the top was discarded behind him. "It's good to be the boss..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"It really bites being the boss," Asuka mumbled before gulping down half a cup of coffee. "Ugh... remind me why you're bringing this to me?"  
Ranma shrugged nervously. "Well, the Senshi are nice girls and all, and from what I keep hearing, I GUESS they're pretty powerful on their own... but they don't seem too bright."  
Asuka looked up from the printout she was reading over. "No offense, but you're not exactly batting a hundred in that arena yourself."  
"Exactly," Ranma said humbly, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's why I took this to you to look over. If it don't impress ME, then it can't be all that hot an idea." Years ago, Ranma would have been insulted at the idea of people coming up with a better combat plan than him, much less someone criticizing his basic intelligence, but serving under Asuka had drilled their comparative strengths and weaknesses firmly into his head; no one was better for judging the intricacies of a plan of attack.  
"Right, right," Asuka mumbled. Then she looked up at him. "By the way... is one of those Senshi a girl named 'Ami Mizuno'?"  
"I can't say. It's a secret," Ranma said firmly as he nodded his head judiciously.  
Asuka sweatdropped and went back to the document. "I see. I thought maybe someone had made a mistake when filing the registration forms. Hmmm..." she felt pretty bad about having arrested and locked up her cousin, but she felt even worse that she found out about Ami's secret identity through a bureaucratic snafu, when the girl's own MOTHER probably had no idea what she was.  
"Well, it's certainly a start, though I wouldn't throw anybody I liked into this strategy," the police captain murmured, taking another sip of coffee. "So, were you involved in writing this up?"  
Ranma nervously tugged on his pigtail. "I... GUESS you could say that..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Ami frowned as she stared at her computer screen and the document that was open and spread across the computer desktop.  
"Mina-chan?"  
Minako looked up from where she was putting away her purse, having just arrived back in the dorm with Ami just moments before. "Yeah?"  
"Were you using my computer before we left?" The genius Senshi asked, scratching her head. "Specifically, did you type up a written outline of our attack plans and then print it out?"  
Minako blinked. "Are you sure you didn't do it?"  
"What?"  
"Well, it wasn't me, and since we came back before the others, I really don't see how anyone else could have done it," Minako explained. "Unless they somehow turned invisible, hid behind our couch the whole three hours we were working it out, and then was dumb enough to type up everything on your computer here to take back with them instead of taking care of it somewhere else."  
Ami frowned deeper, then shook her head. "You're right... I've got to stop drinking in the morning."

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"How often do you think they clean under the sofa cushions in college dorms?" Ranma asked suddenly, taking some change out of his jacket pocket and sorting it on the table.  
"I haven't the slightest," Asuka said, not knowing where that question had come from. "Anyway, this plan looks all right, but it fails to address several important defensive factors; though the target is an office building, they seem to assume the worst they'll face would be guards and possibly automated turrets. A primary Freedom's Angel stronghold is likely to have much more than that on stand-by, especially if they're planning on wiping out the main laboratory underground."  
She chewed her lip for a moment, then took out a pen and started jotting down notes on the document.  
"It's good that they take both primary power and back-up generators into account, but they can't rely on the back-ups being where the building specs say they are, since the structure was heavily modified in secret. Also, the reactors are likely to be far more powerful and harder to destroy than they guess; the FA labs definitely use more power than they take from the city, since such a massive power drain would seem suspicious coming from a chemical lab."  
Asuka drew more notes on the documents, and then turned to her computer, bringing up the building blueprints in question.  
"Now, I can't say for certain, but if I were going to place the generators with the expectation that someone might try to charge in and blow them up, I'd locate them HERE," she said, tapping a point on the computer screen. Then she flipped over the document and started sketching the sub-level blueprints on it.  
"What makes you say that?" Ranma asked, scratching his head.  
"Well, for one, it's the farthest area from the access elevators they could possibly dig up without scraping the sewers and subways. Meaning that anyone trying to get through them would have to deal with nearly every single security measure before they could destroy the power source for those security measures."  
She finished sketching in the proposed room, and then tapped the pen against her lips as she considered it. "As for the specific security... it's hard to say. But in the style of classic evil laboratories, I expect that anytime they find long rows of mutants trapped in glass tubes or containment fields, they'll mysteriously get free just as the infiltrators start to think that the room is safe."  
Ranma frowned. "Hmmm... that DOES happen a lot, huh?"  
"They'll probably have completed mutants on standby, either for security purposes or awaiting transport. I doubt there will be any zombies or creeps, as the T-virus is too much of a security threat to be used as a security measure." She rubbed her chin. "Also, if Tokima is there, you can be sure she's got more in the way of bodyguards than that little brunette twerp and a few grunts packing heat. Probably cyborgs, androids, or even full boomers. They're going to need more than one person to take her down."  
Asuka looked up. "Other than that, I guess it's pretty solid... besides the fact that a counter-attack could strike the facility at any time. Not only will they have to overcome much tougher resistance than they're probably expecting, but enemy units could pour into the building from the outside at any time. Adding another layer of difficulty is the fact that annihilating the entire building or simply wiping out everyone inside is impossible if they want to minimize innocent casualties; not everyone who works for Wraith Labs is a terrorist."  
"Wow. This is hard," Ranma mumbled, scratching his head. "Would you have planned it completely differently if it was you?"  
"I wouldn't have bothered with Wraith Labs headquarters in the first place," Asuka said dismissively. "At least, not without a back-up force and a few federal warrants. But that's why we're the fuzz and they're the superheroes." She shrugged.

Before further serious discussion could continue, Tiro walked past Asuka's office toward the parking lot, pulling on his jacket as he went.  
Asuka's eyes narrowed. "Yamazaki, where do you think you're going?"  
Tiro stopped dead, blinking. "I was just going to hit a coffee shop with Kyle. Maybe get some donuts."  
"Well, you'll have to wait a bit. Snake and Chikiko will be back from that mass murder thing down at the church in a few minutes. Then you can go."  
Tiro's brow furrowed. "... Do you mean to say Snake was **investigating** mass murder, or **causing** it?"  
"Get out of my office," Asuka deadpanned.  
"What? It's a fair question!"  
"And that was a fair demand," the police captain countered. "Now scram!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Man, I just can't score any points with that woman," Tiro mumbled as he stepped outside, the late dusk air cool against his face. "You'd think I could at least question Snake's mental state without her getting mad at me. Yeesh."  
He looked over at Kyle, who was leaning against the trunk of a squad car and waving to him. "Sorry Commander, we gotta wait!"  
"Huh? Why?"  
"Snake's got some case going on right now, and the captain wants him back before we go out. She's getting a little paranoid, I think," Tiro mumbled. "Just 'cause we have a few bloodsuckers roaming around gutting street beggars doesn't mean the damn things are crawling around in alleys waiting to jump out and kill us."

Having heard the lecher's statement, a dark haired man with thick, pointed fangs grinned as he clung to the wall of DAPC headquarters, his presence hidden from human eyes from a stripe of shadow cast from the adjacent building.  
Nudging his head to signal his partner, the midian licked his lips in anticipation.  
And then he lunged, pushing off of the wall and falling right behind the foolish police officer, his hand raking through the air to bisect his prey from shoulder to hip.  
It didn't QUITE work out that way.  
Somehow, against all odds, the brown-haired man yelped and dove out of the way, leaving the unseen attacker cutting nothing but air.  
"Tiro!" Kyle yelled in surprise, watching his subordinate officer scramble away from the confused vampire on hands and knees. "Hey! You can't-GLK!"  
Kyle had his own strong points, but near-prescient danger awareness was not among them. Before he could do more than twitch toward the midian who was attacking Tiro, he was grabbed from behind, and a pair of needle-like fangs drilled into his neck.  
"Holy crap!" Tiro spat as he stumbled to his feet, the first vampire snarling and stalking toward him. "K-Kyle!"  
"Don't yell so loud; it's annoying," the first vampire snapped, preparing for a second dash. "Your friends will all be dead soon. There's nothing you can d-" _WHUMP! WHAM!_ The vampire let out a strangled cry as his partner suddenly smashed into his side, knocking them both hard into a wall.  
Kyle frowned as he rubbed his wounded neck, then grimaced when he brought his blood-streaked hand away. "Ewww... that's just gross, man. What if I get infected or something?"  
Tiro breathed a sigh of relief that Kyle seemed to be okay, since he was the greater threat of the two of them and the vampires would probably attack him instead. "Commander! Vampires!"  
Kyle rolled his eyes. "I know I'm supposed to be the dumb one and everything, but even I'VE figured that out by now, Tiro."  
"What the HELL?" the second midian, his lips still painted with blood from his attack, swayed slightly as he pushed away from his partner. "What are you?"  
"A police officer!" Kyle said immediately.  
"I think he's referring to how you're still standing with a couple of holes punched in your jugular," Tiro explained as he positioned himself behind the blond man.  
"Oh, THAT," Kyle said, sighing. "I'm afraid it's kind of a long story, and since I'm on the clock and all, I should really be killing you guys, not chatting, you know?"  
The second vampire charged, not nearly as interested in Kyle's origins as he might have guessed. "DIE, HUMAN FIL-" _POW!_ The vampire went spiraling through the air, his face smashed in, as Kyle met his high-speed charge with a perfectly-timed haymaker.  
Touching the ground, he skidded along the cement until he smashed into the HQ building's dumpster, denting the side of the steel box, and crushing the rest of his skull completely enough that his body started to disintegrate into dust and blood, completely spent.  
The remaining vampire gaped at the sight of a vampire being clobbered like that, and then stuck two fingers between his teeth before letting out a shrill whistle.  
Immediately two more men jumped down from the adjacent building, both of them landing on the squad car and caving in the top as the vehicle shook from the impact.  
Kyle's eyes widened. "HEY! I just had the dents buffed out of that thing! You stupid dead jerks!"  
The two newcomers weren't as talkative as the first two, and one responded by snapping a kick toward Kyle's head. He grunted at the impact, but his genetically enhanced skeleton held firm, and the blond man grabbed the offending leg before hurling the vampire haphazardly across the lot.  
The second newcomer immediately grabbed onto Kyle's back and bit into his neck opposite the first wound, which was already sealing itself. Before the officer could respond, the first vampire who had summoned the others rushed up and slugged him hard in the stomach, putting all his vampiric speed and strength in addition to his weight into the attack.  
Kyle grunted again. "Dammit... knock it off!" He suddenly jerked his head forward, slamming his forehead into the punching vampire's and painfully dislodging the fangs drinking from his neck. Then he dashed backward, slamming into the headquarters wall with enough force to crack the cement, to say nothing of the ribcage of the undead on his back.

The first vampire shook his head as his vision swam about him, suddenly feeling sluggish. Vampires were highly resistant to pain and didn't need most organs to function, but his brain, which currently had a few chunks of his skull lodged in its frontal lobe, still functioned just like it did in life, and suffered the normal drawbacks when it was damaged.  
Still, the midian struggled to its feet, managing to stand up and fix its vision on the genetically enhanced cop that was currently wiping the floor with them despite its brain being partly destroyed.  
_BLAM!!_  
Once it was completely destroyed by a shotgun blast to the cheek it was a different story, and Tiro nervously turned toward the remaining vampires as his first target fell to the ground and disintegrated.  
"Not good. Sooooo not good. This is NOT my area of expertise!"  
_CRASH!_ He winced as a vampire was sent flying through the windshield of the squad car next to him, striking with enough force to punch through the bullet-proof glass, at the expense of much of the midian's skeletal integrity.  
"Aw, man... I wonder if any of these freaks made it into HQ," he mumbled, aiming the shotgun at the vampire sprawled painfully over the driver's seat of the car.

Kyle blinked as he watched his vehicle shake from the vampire's impact, and felt like tearing his hair out. "Damn it! I wasn't aiming for the car! That's more money out of my budget!"  
In response, the last vampire raked his shoulder from behind, tearing through his jacket and drawing a light spray of blood as its sharpened and hardened nails fought against Kyle's genetically toughened skin.  
In response, Kyle growled and reached over his shoulder to grasp the undead's face, then yanked it over his head before slamming it hard into the ground. Then he lifted up his boot and stomped HARD on the midian's head, crushing the creature's skull into a two-inch depression in the concrete surrounded by cracks and ruptures.

_BLAM!!_ Tiro unloaded his last shotgun shell into the vampire in the car, as the angle prevented him from getting a bead on the blasted thing's head without getting much closer than he wanted.  
Glancing over to Kyle, he groaned when he saw that the genetically enhanced officer had been chewed up pretty badly (and literally); both sides of his neck sported rapidly clotting bite wounds, and he had long claw marks over one shoulder, his chest, and all over one arm.  
"Hey, are you alright?" Tiro asked, reloading his shotgun as he made sure that the vampire in the car was turning to dust like the others.  
"Yeah, I'm okay," Kyle grumbled, massaging his aching neck. "But the car isn't! A bunch of dents, a shattered windshield, blood ALL OVER the carpets, and you totally tore up the seats and dashboard with shotgun fire!"  
"Putting aside the minor property damage - kind of unusual that it was OUR property for once - I think it's kind of important to consider that those vampires were out here specifically to kill us," Tiro deadpanned.  
Kyle looked confused, which didn't surprise the shorter man. "Uh... well, what ELSE would they do?"  
"As usual, you don't understand," Tiro said, a touch of nervousness in his voice. "I seriously doubt they were out looking for a good meal and just decided that two cops to split between the four of them was the perfect opportunity. I think they were out to kill US specifically. As in the DAPC."  
"Oh." Kyle considered this. "So what? We hunt them down and kill them, right? It's not like we can get mad about it."  
"That's not the point, musclehead," Tiro muttered, scrubbing his head with his hand. "I'm worried about the others..."  
As in response to his concern, a DAPC squad car turned the corner, its headlights shining in the officers' eyes as it rolled up to them slowly.  
Tiro squinted his eyes as he held his hand up to try and shield them from the glare. "Is that Snake and Junko?"  
Kyle raised an eyebrow as he started to wipe off his hands. "Who else would it be?"  
"I'd rather not know the answer to that..." Tiro trailed off as the vehicle stopped about a meter in front of them, and the door slowly opened.  
"Snake? That you?" Tiro asked, his voice coming out with a nervous waver that he definitely didn't like as he crept closer to the door so that he could peek past it.  
"Bleaar..." With an inhuman growl, a withered, blood-soaked head sporting several deep gashes bobbed up over the top of the door, its white, clouded eyes goggling at Tiro listlessly.  
"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"  
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Snake's howling laughter soon overcame Tiro's scream of terror as the terminated ghoul tumbled onto the ground, a railroad spike impaled through its chest (which had been hidden earlier by the door). "Oh man! That was awesome! you should have seen your face!" The American barely managed to spit out as he stepped out of the car, though he had to hold onto the door to keep from falling to the ground laughing.  
Tiro's ashen face regained its color with surprising speed. "What the hell?! You jerk!"  
Junko sighed as she got out of the other side of the vehicle, a clothespin pinching her nose shut. "Was it really worth keeping that filthy thing in the car this whole time with the windows rolled up just for that stupid joke?"  
"Of course it was!" Snake said gleefully, kicking the corpse aside. "Considering this is your assigned car, anyway. You're gonna want to get it washed. That stench is gonna stick to the seats for weeks."  
As the redhead glared at Snake, Kyle discarded the whole incident that had just occurred to address the more pressing issue. "Hey, Snake! We've got trouble. Some of the vampires are-"  
"Hunting us down, yeah. We noticed," Snake said, pulling out his Pancor Jackhammer and glancing around at the damage and various piles of dust. "Specifically, we noticed about ten minutes before they set a trap for us behind the church, trying to use scarface here as a distraction. When nobody responded, they poked their heads in to search for us, and MAYBE saw the proxy mines just before they were blown up and buried."  
"You destroyed the church?" Tiro deadpanned.  
"It's cool; I'm Jewish," Snake explained.  
"Shut up, both of you!" Junko suddenly snapped. "I hear gunfire!"  
Snake frowned. "Well, yeah, but it's just..." he trailed off and gazed toward headquarters. "Uh-oh."

_BOOM!!_ The four officers flinched back as several windows on the second floor exploded outward, flames and glass pouring out over the parking lot. They promptly took cover as the latter of those two substances fell to the constraints of gravity, and quickly dashed toward the back entrance under the rain of sharp fragments.  
Tiro reached the door first, and his hand grabbed and twisted the knob, his face paling as the door barely budged open. "They barricaded it or something! It won't open! What the heck? How'd they get in so fast?!"  
"I can open it!" Kyle said quickly, stepping forward before Junko grabbed his arm.  
"OR, instead of tearing apart our own HQ, we can use the front entrance; the doors are much bigger and they couldn't barricade them so quickly," she explained.

Were any of them strategic geniuses, they might have considered that breaking through the barricade was the superior tactic anyway, as the vampires would most likely be prepared for a counter-attack front the front entrance.  
However, the only one that even remotely qualified as a strategic genius was Snake, and he would have much rather fought vampires head-on than risk being the one assigned to fix the door.  
The four officers dashed around the corner, only stopping for a moment to regard Usagi, who was looking around in confusion.  
"Oh! Hey! Is everything all right? I came a little late for my tutoring, but then I heard an explosion and..." she trailed off as they simply dashed past her and up the front steps, slowing only slightly once they reached the double-doors leading into the main lobby.  
"Tekai, you're on point. Chikiko, cover our rear, but make sure you shout something if you see the enemy instead of just firing; that glorified dart gun you call a pistol won't do anything to a vampire, especially with your aim," Snake barked out orders, yet again heedless both of the proper chain of command and Junko's self-esteem. Nobody complained.  
Usagi blinked, and then started to get nervous. This looked fairly serious. "Uhm, is there anything I can do to help?"  
They all glanced at the blonde briefly, considering.  
Of course, out of all of them, Snake was the only one that had a good idea of Usagi's fighting abilities (as Junko couldn't recall enough of Akina's memories to judge), so he again took charge. "Can you fly?"  
"Yes!" She said immediately, a yellow glow appearing around her head and sliding down her body, replacing her wool shirt and long skirt with the black bodysuit of her combat form.  
_Kerchunk!_ Twin boosters popped out of her shoulderblades, and started to glow as she prepared for takeoff.  
Everyone except Snake was staring at Usagi with varying expressions on their faces. Kyle was confused, as usual, Junko was captivated by the bizarre bunny ear-like apparatus on Usagi's head, and Tiro was entranced by the form-hugging contours of Usagi's combat suit.  
Actually, Snake was staring at her too, but he was clearly trying to decide if he was looking at a combat asset or a decoy. "Well, you did well enough against the vampires before... apparently they're attacking us head-on now. If you can, blast off into the fourth floor and check on the geeks up there. Then go down from there floor by floor until you meet up with either us, Captain Takami, and/or Saotome. Eliminate all opposition. Got it?"  
Usagi nodded sharply, her expression turning determined. "Right! I'll do my best!"  
_WhrrrrrrrmmmmmmMMMM..._ her boosters continued to charge as she stood in place, arms stretched out in a "takeoff" pose.  
Everyone sweatdropped as the jet boosters glowed brighter and brighter, and even started to shake, but Usagi stayed in place.  
"Weird," the blonde cyborg mumbled as she brought her arms down. "Wait, how do the rockets work again? I guess I have to-" _FWOOOOOOOSH!!_  
The police officers all ducked as Usagi burst into the air like a mortar shell, slamming into a fourth story window at an angle that had them all wincing before they suffered their second minor rain of glass and debris.

"Damn," Snake mumbled, "shoulda gotten her on decoy duty."  
"Do you have any distant relatives we don't know about, Commander?" Tiro asked, for once forsaking lecherous commentary to take a jab at his superior's family history of ineptitude.  
Kyle frowned. "I really think now's not the time to be talking about my family..."  
"Yamazaki, grab a frag!" Snake shouted, moving up in front of Kyle as Tiro scooted up the other side. Then he took out a flashbang and pulled the pin as Kyle took hold of the door handle.  
"NOW!!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Kimiko sighed wearily as she stared down at the carnage below. "This is pointless. Both assaults have failed to slay any of the targets, and already fifteen of our number are dead. Wait, no... six-no, seventeen." She winced as the psychic links she had attached to her subordinates faltered, indicating the vampires' deaths. Her count didn't even include the separate attack made on the officers investigating the church, which had already failed miserably.  
The man standing next to her, a lanky fellow in a black leather jacket that hung off of his body, snarled and bared his fangs. "This is ridiculous! Why aren't we down there helping?!"  
"Because those idiots volunteered for this duty, that's why," Kimiko snapped. "I cannot disobey Lord Ran's will. I can, however, do my best to accommodate his goals by culling the unfit from our ranks, and advancing the strongest among us to better serve in this conflict. In this case I'm doing both; if we were down there, we would simply annihilate all the humans ourselves, and they would all survive and learn only to sponge off of the efforts of their betters." She winced again. "Although the police are burning through our men much faster than I expected. There are only five left now."  
Behind her, another vampire snorted and ran a hand through his slicked-back hair. "And here I thought you were the elder that actually cared about your own kind. Tough love, eh?"  
She glared at him. "It was much easier to care when there were less of you idiots. And when they knew their place," she snapped. "But enough of this. Our men are almost completely wiped out; if we wait much longer, the success of the mission may be in jeopardy. Yamato, you attack those four that just entered the building. Shio, you meet with the men we have left on the attack; they're on the second floor, clustered together, and they don't know what to do anymore. Lead them in a charge against the officers holding out in the second floor." Her lips pressed into a thin line. "I'll follow that strange blonde girl."  
The vampire named Shio rolled his eyes behind his shades. "Oh, sure, you take the easy kill."  
"That girl had ROCKET BOOSTERS in her back, you upstart. Regardless of her ability to control them, that alone should warn you not to judge her from appearance. Now GO!" She swept a hand out, and both vampires growled, leaping from the building.  
The thin, leather-clad one bounced lightly off the hood of Kyle's damaged cruiser and onto the ground, and then stalked purposefully around the corner of the building, his jaw slowly grinding from side to side.  
The midian with slicked hair and sunglasses slid down the wall of the building he was standing on, then jumped off of it toward the HQ, breaking through a window with ease.  
Kimiko shook her head and levitated upward, floating over the gap between buildings.  
"And so, hunted relentlessly and driven from our homes by the enemy, we instead throw ourselves into his hungry maw," she intoned wryly. "Immortality is so fleeting sometimes."

Without another word, she floated toward the outer wall, and then passed into it, phasing through the cement and steel as if it were air.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Uungh..." Usagi twitched from within the pile of rubble she was buried in, and then grit her teeth before pushing herself up. "That hurt... a lot..." a yellow glow appeared around her suit's collar, and then slowly crawled down her body, causing all the shards of glass to dislodge themselves from the rubbery material and all the cuts and tears to seal themselves.  
+Trauma classification: Medium-level concussive damage incurred. Minor structural damage incurred. Total systems down: 3. Kinetic dampeners offline. Autorepair systems initiated.+  
"Well, that doesn't sound TOO bad... I guess..." She mumbled as she got to her feet unsteadily. "Let's see now..."  
She started looking around the hall, and winced as she saw several long streaks of blood on the walls, as well as a great deal of dust and discarded clothing. There were several small rents and tears in the floor, and a few gaping gouges in the walls that were clearly made with some sort of sharp blade. Which was rather impressive, considering that the walls on this level were all shielded with a half-inch layer of steel (which had made her forced entry all the more painful).  
"Huh... I wonder who was fighting here?" Usagi wondered aloud. She was no expert in matters of combat, despite her extensive experience, but this didn't look right for a battle between vampires and armed police. Even SHE managed to notice the complete lack of shell casings on the ground, as well as anything that looked remotely like a bullet impact on bloodstained walls.  
_Grrrr... Srah! Skrak!_  
The cyborg frowned as she heard some snapping and scraping noises coming from the next room, and quickly walked over to the sounds.  
She paused briefly as she heard some gunfire from below her, and chewed on her lip as she considered her orders. 'Snake said to check on "the geeks," whoever they are... and those noises do sound suspicious...' Gulping nervously, she crept toward the obviously damaged door, never noticing a pale, ageless face emerge from the surface of the wall behind her.

"H-Hello?" Usagi tried, gently pushing on the wobbly metal door to try and get a peek into the room.  
Instead of it opening just enough for her to look inside without anyone inside being able to identify her, the door instead decided that it had suffered enough abuse for the day, and it snapped off its hinges at the cyborg's touch, collapsing inward. Usagi, in dedication to her chronic clumsiness, promptly fell into the room after the door.  
"Ouch!" She hissed, pushing herself up and rubbing her nose where it had impacted the fallen barrier.  
After a moment of comforting herself, she remembered that she was in the middle of a potentially dangerous situation, and looked up to see what was in the room.  
Structurally, the room consisted of a wide open lobby, with several hospital gurneys parked next to one wall, and a long white curtain separating the room from the next one.  
It would have seemed perfectly bland and sterile, if it weren't for the wild streaks of blood, torn clothes, piles of dust, and the fact that two of the gurneys had been ripped apart wildly and were now scattered around the room in pieces.  
Plus there was the massive, armored beast in the middle of the room that was slowly turning around and glaring at her, blood-soaked claws twitching.  
"Gyah! It's that... that... that THING!" Usagi yelped, scrambling to her feet. "Wait... okay... it's on our side. Isn't it?" She gulped as the alien growled at her. "Just what IS it, anyway?"  
Blocky green text scrolled across her field of vision in answer. +Designation: Hunter. Classification: Light melee support beast class A. Species: Zerg, advanced zergling genus - "Devouring one". Armor: Bio-enhanced full-body carapace with protection equal to medium-grade tank armor. Weapons: Beak, claws, and talons containing large percentages of super-heavy alloys to allow the rending of armor significantly stronger than the creature's own. Top speed: 80-90 kilometers per hour, which can be maintained for nearly twelve hours without rest. Senses: Good eyesight and decent hearing, with no sense of smell and a poor sense of touch and taste. Possesses a sensitive psychic node that can pick up fear and anger among sentient beings. Other abilities: Capable of burrowing through nearly any material for a short ways, and can regenerate any non-fatal wounds. Extremely powerful metabolism that can digest any given substance known to man, regardless of its chemical makeup or even radioactivity.+  
Usagi noted with great relief that the zergling hadn't charged her while she was taking the time to read all that, and was slowly circling around her toward the wall parallel the hallway, its fierce crimson eyes boring into her.  
_Gulp!_ "Uh... okay..." she slowly got down onto her knees and then beckoned toward the killer alien with her hand. "G-Good Hunter! Good boy! You're a good boy, aren't you? You don't want to hurt me!"  
Hunter lowered his head and raised his rear-mounted claws, as if challenging Usagi's statement. "Shreeagh!"  
"Eep! Wait! I'm on your side! I think!" Usagi waved frantically.  
Hunter was unconvinced, and let out a final hiss before he batted aside the remains of a hospital gurney with his head and rushed forward toward the frozen cyborg.  
"HUNTER!! Down, boy!"  
The screech of tearing metal bombarded Usagi's ears as the zergling suddenly dug its heels in, its head and claws dipping just a few feet short of its intended lunge.  
Seras sighed in relief as he pushed aside the blood-spattered curtain leading into the next room. "Hunter, back off! She's with us."  
The alien snarled, but did as instructed, its tail whipping back and forth as it crept backward.  
Usagi let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, her hand pressed against her chest. Strangely enough, her heart didn't seem to be beating any faster than usual, but by now she had learned to ignore little physical oddities like that. "Phew! You're okay! That's a relief! Snake-san sent me to check on you."  
Seras shrugged as he pointed to Hunter. "Me and Yamma heard some ruckus, and caught sight of Hunter cutting up a few of the bloodsuckers." He idly kicked a pile of dust, scattering the dried undead remains across the floor. "They didn't seem to be able to hurt him easily, so we left things to him. Some of them managed to get past him into this room, but I guess they weren't expecting any sort of countermeasures." He smirked and held up a thin canister of his anti-vampire garlic spray. "They were still rolling around on the floor screaming when the big guy caught up with them."

Usagi nodded in understanding. "Well, if you're safe, then I guess I should help out downstairs..."  
She trailed off, frowning. Something wasn't right here. It was way too convenient that the DAPC would easily mop up all the attackers in the short time that it took for help to arrive. She was usually an optimist, and gladly took any seemingly simple situation at face value, but something about this situation bothered her, and it wasn't just the huge, blood-stained killing machine hissing at her just a few meters away.  
"Computer, scan for any more vampires," she said suddenly, and her sensor fins twitched.  
+Scanning for additional bio-energy signatures... bio-energy anomaly detected! PROXIMITY WARNING!! DANGER!!+  
_Shrak!_ Blood, oil, and sparks sprayed from Usagi's back as a glowing green hand clawed at her from behind, the attack seeming to come out of a thin, barely visible mist that had been gathering around the doorway.  
Seras gaped and stepped back as Usagi screamed and fell to the floor; he had mistaken the mist as some dust kicked up by the general havoc going on outside, but evidently it was something more sinister. He raised the spray canister in his hand.  
Kimiko quickly materialized and snapped her fingers, causing the canister to fly free of Seras' hand and land in her own. "Hmph. 'Countermeasures,' you called this? You humans and your science..." She crushed the canister in her hand, ignoring the mild stinging sensation as the liquid burst out of the canister and spilled over her hand and arm.  
Usagi blinked rapidly as the pain from her back began to subside, and stared up at the vampire that had attacked her.  
She was oddly... plain, for a vampire; all the female midians Usagi had seen so far had looked like supermodels, with perfectly smooth, pale skin, ultra-slim bodies, and pert, firm breasts. This woman had a certain agelessness about her, like an older woman who simply lacked wrinkles or any of the other flaws of old skin, and she had long, shining platinum hair. Besides that though, she was decidedly... average.  
What WAS more extravagant was her clothes, which consisted of a simple, yet elegant white strapless ballroom dress, with a long silk mantle that floated about her neck on a breeze that currently didn't exist. In a different situation, Usagi would have TOTALLY asked her where she shopped.  
"SHREEAGH!!" Hunter took great exception to the increasing tension in the room, and lunged at the apparent cause of it.  
In response, Kimiko's hand moved sharply in a backhand motion.  
_Thwack!_ Despite the fact that she was about two seconds too early to physically strike her attacker, Hunter suddenly went flying to the side as if he was simply swatted out of the way, and crashed sidelong into the row of gurneys on the side of the room.  
Usagi winced from the noise, to say nothing of the actual attack. 'Uh-oh... this is definitely bad. Can I beat her?'  
+Target identified: Vampire class A. Scans indicate that this unit's power is consistent with standard midian profile. Powers include shadow manipulation, personal transmutation, telekinesis, and enhanced regeneration. Odds of combat success, considering unit Cyber Moon's current weapon proficiency and system damage... 12+  
"You there," Kimiko said to Usagi, staring down at her imperiously. "I wish to speak with you. You might prove useful, or at least have some interesting information." She turned toward Seras. "I'm afraid you'll have to die, though. Orders are orders."  
Seras, oddly enough, just smirked, despite being disarmed of his only effective vampire defense. "You'll have to get through our loyal mascot there, first."  
_Shnk! Skrakt!_ Hunter shredded a gurney that had fallen on top of him, and then smacked another impediment to the side with his head, growling fiercely.  
"I'll be the first to admit that I'm not as well-versed in vampire physiology and abilities as I probably should be, even after partially dissecting one," Seras said casually, fishing a small stainless steel flask out of his pocket and taking a quick swig of the contents. "_Gulp!_ But I've yet to see you freaks do anything that could hurt our little friend here."  
Hunter hopped to the side and then leapt, only to freeze in mid-air when the vampiress raised her palm toward him.  
"Do not trifle with me, monster!" Kimiko snapped, her hand suddenly covered in a green energy.  
Pressing the fingers of that hand together, she stabbed it into the underside of Hunter's neck, piercing the outer carapace with a loud _Crack!_  
Hunter obviously took exception to this, and lashed out at the midian's face with his claws rather than paying any attention to the wound.  
"Gwah!" Kimiko cried out as metal-hard claws sliced through her cheek and skull with equal ease, and then she swept her hand to the side, sending Hunter once again flying into the wall. _Wham!_  
Hissing as the cuts rapidly shrunk and the skin sealed after them, Kimiko glanced at her hand distastefully, and at the bit of dark red ichor that coated her fingertips. She had barely managed to break the zergling's armor, and the attack hadn't even fazed the beast.  
'I may have to circumvent that creature... what an annoyance,' she thought, idly licking the blood off her fingers. _Pthoo!_ She immediately spat it out, and then coughed at the horrible taste.  
_Ch-chunk!_  
Kimiko's head jerked to the side, and she frowned as she saw the strange blonde girl aiming some sort of weapon in her wrist. "Oh, please..."  
_Pshaw! Pshaw!_ Usagi let fly with a pair of plasma bolts, not entirely surprised when the projectiles bored through the vampiress like she was made of mist - which it was, at times - splashing against the far wall.  
The holes in Kimiko's body swiftly expanded as her body turned completely into mist, and the transformed nosferatu swept toward Seras, ignoring Hunter as he dashed through the cloud swiping for something substantive to tear up.

Seras frowned as the cloud approached, the mist forming what appeared to be a skull at the head as it floated toward the scientist.  
"Run! Quick!" Usagi shouted as she got to her feet again, desperately trying to think of a weapon that might work on such an insubstantial enemy.  
Seras did no such thing, and took another quick swig of scotch before slamming his hand onto a button next to him.  
_Pshwoooooo!_ Immediately, jets of sanitizing agents blasted down from the ceiling, disorienting the midian as her gaseous form was suddenly mixed with foreign anti-bacterial agents.  
_VwoooooOOOOOOOSH!_ Then the sanitation mist, vampire mist, and a good deal of the vampire dust were all sucked up into the ceiling fan.  
Usagi blinked as her hair fell back to the ground, the long ponytails having been lifted up into the air by the powerful suction. "Wow... that... that was... wow."  
Seras sighed as he upended the flask in his hand, seeing but a single drop of his precious liquor clinging to the lip. "That won't stop her for long. You should go after her."  
"Right!" Usagi said, her combat bracer appearing over her forearm. "Uh... but what about you?"  
"I'm tired of this; I'm going to get more scotch," the drunk said, waving her off dismissively. "Just follow Hunter; he should be able to track the damn witch."  
The zergling snarled fiercely at the mention of his name, and he lumbered forward through the curtain to the next room, eager to sink his claws into the slippery undead woman.  
Swallowing nervously - though whether it was due to chasing a powerful vampire or following Hunter was anybody's guess - Usagi followed him through the bloodstained curtain.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Shit, shit, SHIT!! This is insane! We gotta get outta here! We can't stay! We're all gonna DIE!"  
A large vampire with bulging muscles and a shaved head snarled as he glanced down the smoke-filled hallway. "Would sombody shut him UP?! We don't need this crap right now!" He glared down at the blubbering vampire, who was sobbing to himself and clutching his head like a madman.  
"Give 'im a break, man! He just saw his girlfriend get blown to pieces!" A second vampire said, looking quite nervous himself.  
"No, I won't give him a break! If you cowards don't shape up, we're ALL gonna be dust!" the first vampire shouted.  
All around the beleaguered midians, dented and torn pieces of furniture had been moved into the hallway they were in to serve as makeshift barricades... as well as convenient cover for a few explosive traps.  
Originally the barricades were used by the vampires' prey to aid their retreat. The vampires were confused and dismayed to find themselves using the cover just as often and not nearly as well.  
"Are you SURE there's only two of them?" The shortest of the three remaining vampires asked. "How'd they respond so fast?"  
"Dammit, I DON'T KNOW!!" the bald-headed vampire snarled as he kicked aside a piece of desk and then hopped back, waiting for any traps to go off. "That blue-haired chick managed to knife Jaan before she could bite her, and then the guy... and that gun..." he shuddered despite his stubborn courage to move on. Six booming gunshots. Six howling nosferatu collapsing into dust all over the floor. The man's cold, deadly gaze as he punched a third-dan black belt's lower jaw up into his brain case. The shrill sound of steel being drawn before that blinding silver flash...  
'We screwed up. We screwed up big time.' They were puppies assaulting a lion's den, as ludicrous as the idea would have sounded during their briefing. 'Kimiko was absolutely right. We were arrogant to think it was going to be so easy...'  
The other vampires followed the leader cautiously, the last one calming slightly from his nervous breakdown upon seeing the other midian's steely resolve.  
"So what's the plan?" The short one asked anxiously. "Are we just going to keep pushing forward bit by bit and let them wear us down?"  
"Hell, I dunno!" the first vampire snarled. "I'm not supposed to be the leader here! Can you think of a better plan?"  
The others were silent as the bald-headed undead reached a T-intersection in the hallway and slowed to a halt. "Which way did they go?"

It was a thing of great interest whether becoming a vampire affected one's common sense and instinct for self-preservation through the deception that vampires were invincible, or because undeath physically tampered one's natural body and mental chemistry. The observation these theories were based on was that vampires were far more impulsive and prone to reckless acts than humans.  
Most would argue that this is appropriate, as vampires are far less vulnerable than humans. However, ALL could agree that there are times, no matter how indestructible one thinks he is, that a little common sense really did help.  
This was one of those times, as evidenced by the LACK of sense that the shortest vampire displayed in trotting up to the intersection and leaning over to look down the hall.  
To the vampire's credit (sort of), he had guessed right in which direction to look first, and spotted the prey right away.  
_Blam!_ Before he could say anything to that effect, the back of his skull burst into bits of bone and gore, and he slowly slumped to the ground as his brain suffered catastrophic failure due to the hole recently drilled through its frontal lobe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nice shot," Ranma mumbled as he watched the vampire slowly turn to dust. The effect was a lot less spectacular when the killing blow was made by a mundane weapon firing ordinary lead slugs, but it was just as lethal.  
"Thanks," Asuka said quietly as she reigned back her weapon, allowing Ranma to get back to bandaging her left bicep. Her body armor laid on the floor at their feet, one of the shoulders ripped off and a shallow tear across the chest. "They know where we are now, and they'll probably be expecting us to fall back again."  
Of course, they weren't falling back any further, as they had reached their destination; the only place in HQ that was both somewhat insecure and valuable to an enemy assaulting the building. It was the reason Asuka had retreated in the face of the "surprise" attack instead of pushing forward to find Kyle and Tiro.  
Ranma nodded and glanced to his left, where the DAPC armory laid behind a reinforced steel door and three nigh-impregnable locks.  
At least, they were nigh impregnable to humans. Ranma didn't think that the vampires would have any way of getting in without the proper keys and the passcode, but it was now his mission to make the issue moot. The vampires had attacked with nothing more than teeth and claws, and had suffered terrible losses for that insult. They would not be allowed to arm themselves if he could help it.  
Ranma heard another cry of despair from the hall intersection and rolled his eyes. Not only were the vampires showing very little appreciation for tactics, but they were also being obnoxiously loud. One of them in particular had been blubbering frantically ever since the first bomb trap had gone off.  
Asuka checked the tightness of her bandages, and then nudged her chin toward the discarded armor. "Could you help put that back on, please? I don't want to move too much."  
Ranma nodded silently, and picked up the shattered armor, quickly sliding it down over his superior's head so that it didn't obstruct her vision for long. He started attaching straps a moment later. "Are you sure you don't want something bigger than the Eagle? Like a shotgun?"  
"I don't think I could handle the kick of anything bigger with my arm like this," she answered calmly. "Besides, I want the armory door to remain locked until every one of those freaks is dead. How many of those silver bullets do you have left?"  
"I emptied the first clip. I only have one more," Ranma explained. "I thought we might have to go on another raid tonight, so I had them on me ahead of time."  
"Then get in position. Either they'll muster up the courage for another go, or they'll bug out soon."  
"Gotcha." Ranma took a deep breath and kneeled lower behind the two filing cabinets piled sidelong in front of them, his Jackal in his right hand and a kodachi in his left.  
Asuka glanced over at the man, and then looked out over the hallway. "You know... on second thought..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

_WHAM!_ "Ghg!"  
The vampire let out a strangled cry as his head was slammed hard into the wall, the hand pressed over his face slowly crushing his skull. He clawed frantically with his remaining hand at his assailant's face, only to have that arm seized fiercely around the forearm.  
_Crack!_ "Mhrm!"

Across the lobby, another midian coughed weakly and craned her head up to stare down the barrel of Snake's Pancor Jackhammer. "If... If you're gonna kill me... then kill me already..." She coughed again, spilling a little bit of blood. It would have been much more normally, but vampires typically didn't have much blood in their veins anyway, and she'd lost most of hers along with the lower half of her body.  
Snake's lips curled into a smirk. "Don't be so fast to die... again. How many friends do you have, and where'd they go?"  
The vampire stared back at him, gasping, and then stared up at the ceiling. "I... I don't know. I don't know how many are left. We thought we'd taken that pigtailed guy by surprise, but... I'd never seen anything like it..." A tear idly leaked from the corner of her eye as she whispered up at him. "So many of us gone... all in an instant... I couldn't tell what was going on... and Yoruichi... oh God, Yoruichi, why?"  
Coughing, the midian seemed to snap out of her sudden fit of depression. "I said that we should run, so they left me here to guard the rear. Shoulda listened to me..." She spent a few more seconds convulsing, then locked eyes with Snake again. "They're coming, you know. The old ones. We're nothing compared to them."  
Snake snorted. "You're not so hot compared to us, either."  
"Hah... you simple little humans..." she choked for a moment, then gasped and continued. "There's nowhere to run. They'll find you and-" _BLAM!!_  
Snake reigned in his weapon as a spent 12 gauge cartridge bounced on the tile floor. "And we'll thank them for saving us the trouble of hunting them down. With extreme prejudice." He turned around and noted that Kyle was still pinning the other vampire against the wall. "Finish him off; we've got to get a move on."  
Kyle nodded sharply, and then suddenly yanked his enemy out of the wall, lifted him up, and then slammed him on the ground.  
Tiro winced briefly at the vampire's cry of pain, but showed no further hesitation in aiming his own shotgun at the incapacitated foe. _BLAM!! BLAM!!_

"They've gone upstairs... why?" Snake asked, his brow creasing. "Maybe Saotome wasn't able to protect the captain? Or... Wait! The armory!" Although Snake's reasoning as far as their destination guessed that they had dashed for the weapons cache to arm themselves rather than preventing the enemy from doing the same, he had managed to correctly deduce the most likely destination for their missing peers. "All right, we're moving-"  
"LOOK OUT!!" Junko suddenly screamed, diving to the side behind a desk rather than firing her sidearm as a veritable whirlwind of shadows careened through the front entrance of the HQ.  
Yamato let the surrounding shadows dissipate as the redhead dodged, and then grinned as the three men all turned gun barrels toward him. "Howdy. I'm-"  
_BLAM!! BLAM!! Bang! Bang! BLAM!!_  
"You're... what? Dust? Gone? In agonizing pain, maybe?" Snake asked as his spent shells bounced onto the floor, the undead abomination staggering backwards.  
Yamato stopped and lurched forward, glaring out of the one eye that remained after the barrage. Half his face had been blown clean off, along with one arm, and he had a few holes in his chest from Kyle's pistol as well.  
"Stop that. It stings," he said in a hollow, tired voice.  
"No," Snake replied. _BLAM!! BLAM!! BLAM!!_  
The last shotgun blast removed the midian's abdomen, and his legs and pelvis collapsed forward as the remains of his upper torso was reduced to bloody muck splattered all over the front door.

Junko winced. "Well... that was easy."  
"It's not over yet," Tiro said nervously, his senses telling him that he was still way too close to death to be comfortable. "Right? It's not turning into dust! Why isn't it turning into dust?!"  
Snake frowned as he watched the gore on the entrance and the intact lower torso seemingly dissolve into shadows on the ground that really shouldn't have been there. "Well, nuts. Chikiko, back off! This guy's got a few tricks up his sleeve!"  
Junko gladly fled from behind the desk, running up behind Kyle, who stepped forward with his sidearm ready to fire.  
Tiro gulped as the shadows originating from the upper and lower torsos met, and then slowly seemed to crawl along the floor toward them. "S-So if guns can't kill this thing, what are we gonna do?"  
"Guns can kill it," Snake said reassuringly as he popped a few more shells into his shotgun. "Guns can kill anything. The trick is just finding a good spot to shoot at..." He glanced up at the ceiling lights, noting that only the outer fluorescent lamps were currently on; normally someone would turn on the rest of them as dusk passed, but obviously that hadn't been very important with the vampire attack going on.  
Snake snorted contemptuously as the blob of darkness crawling along the floor began to pick up speed. 'The idiots that charged this place didn't even turn off the lights when they can all probably see much better in the dark than we can. Do they pick these losers up off the street or what?'  
"Chikiko," the American said suddenly, snapping his fingers and pointing toward the lightswitch. When she glanced at it and looked back, he nudged his hand up in imitation of flipping a switch.  
Junko quickly jumped for the lightswitch, hoping dearly that whatever Snake had in mind worked; otherwise she'd probably have to get smashed in the head to unleash Akina, and she was having more and more headaches recently due to the frequent concussions.  
_Click!_  
The shadow immediately halted as light flooded the room, and the edges of the pool of darkness began to writhe and waver, as if trying to escape the illumination. Then it seemed to solidify and started to swell off of the ground, as if it was no longer a shadow but rather a spill of some black fluid, like crude oil.  
"FIRE!!" Snake screamed, unloading his own weapon into the murky shadow.  
The fierce crackle of gunfire filled the lobby as the spot of darkness was ripped apart by hot metal, the blackness writhing as it tore and reformed around the bits of metal and tile that poured into it from above and burst into it from below.  
"REAAAAAGH!!" With a feral howl, the shadow-stuff split apart into tiny blobs that rolled away from the police officers, hitting a wall and then slipping into a hole made by a stray gunshot.

"Okay..." Tiro began, feeling his sense of impending doom lessen considerably. "That went... well?"  
"We definitely hurt it..." Junko mumbled.  
Snake growled. "Not good enough. I don't want it hurt, I want it DEAD. Real dead, not 'my-heart-isn't-beating-but-I-think-I'll-go-for-a-stroll-anyway' dead!" He glanced up the stairs. "Bah... either he'll wimp out or he'll try and take us from behind. Chikiko, turn out those lights you just flipped on. Commander, you've got point, I'll handle the rear. Anybody got a flashbang left?"  
Junko turned around after she did as instructed and held up the stun weapon.  
"Give it here. Good. Now let's get a move on! Up the stairs!"  
"Lieutenant, how can we possibly kill that guy for good? It's like some liquid shadow... thing! You can't kill that!" Tiro complained as he followed Junko up the stairs.  
"How do you know?" Snake asked as he moved backward after Tiro. "Nothing is invincible, Yamazaki. Remember that. This guy's crazy shadow-melding powers have to have limitations of their own. Just keep that inexplicable danger sense of yours handy; when you start running, that's our cue to start shooting."  
"Yeah, yeah..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Please, come as fast as you can!" Usagi shouted into her forearm, idly wondering when her repair drones had stolen away and installed her communicator. "It's a real mess down here! We need help!"  
_Figures those DA morons would get into trouble like this._ Rei mumbled over the line.  
_Rei, this is no time for your petty grudges! Usagi-chan needs our help!_ Ami admonished.  
_Yeah, yeah...  
Hey, look at it this way; after we save their asses, we can make them apologize for locking us up!_ Makoto said brightly.  
_Is Snake there? Ooh, this is going to be so cool! I'll bet he kills most of the vampires himself!_  
"Just get here as fast as you can, okay? I have to go!" The communicator switched off with a mental command, and then flipped over back onto the cyborg's arm before the cut-away section of her combat suit sealed itself around that portion of her arm.  
"It'll take them a little while to get here," Usagi mumbled as she turned a corner.  
_Bump._ "GWAH!" Usagi shouted as her ankle caught on Hunter's tail, and she fell over flat right next to zergling, which immediately turned and snapped his jaws at her.  
"Meep! Sorry!" Usagi said desperately, trying to scramble as far away as she could from the killer alien without heading back where she came from.  
Hunter's growl trailed off as he turned his head and looked up at the ventilation shaft that molded into the wall. He had been leading Usagi through a maintenance closet and down past a number of power regulators that were linked directly to the laboratory, and it seemed that the room ended while the ventilation system continued.  
"So she went in there?" Usagi asked as she pushed herself to her feet.  
Hunter growled in response, which didn't help her much, although it reminded her to keep a good couple of feet away for safety.  
Usagi focused her eyes for a moment, not disoriented at all when her vision suddenly went black before her X-ray scope activated.  
"Ah! There she is! And there's someone in there with her!" In an act of uncharacteristic foresight, she deactivated her X-ray scope to avoid running into walls later. "Come on! We have to find a way around!"  
Hunter apparently disagreed, as he growled deeply in the back of his throat, and then lunged forward into the wall.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Kimiko shook her head as she materialized slowly, having struggled greatly to find a way out of the ventilation shaft in mist form.  
'Son of jackal! Damn! It's hard to concentrate when you're body's being jumbled around like that!'  
She shook her head, trying to relieve herself of the dizziness that accompanied her escape. It was hard enough trying to keep a sense of location and seek escape when one was being swirled around like a cyclone, but it was also difficult to re-materialize when her mist form was so thoroughly contaminated by foreign particles.  
"Crap! I think some of it got in my mouth! Blech!" She was sorely tempted to float right back to that man and drain his blood slowly for this complete humiliation, but honestly she was far more concerned now that she had gotten a firsthand taste of the DAPC's legendary resourcefulness.  
'I should find the other midians first, killing those between us. Then we can all hunt-oh! Somebody's nearby!'  
"Hello? Is anyone there?" Came a male voice from around one of the large curtains.  
Kimiko didn't know where she was now, but it was a rather dark, gloomy room with many bloodstains on the floor. All around the room were metal tables, each of which had a long, white plastic curtain surrounding it.  
She stepped around one of the curtains, intent on facing the newcomer head-on.  
Once she saw the man, she raised an eyebrow. It was a tall, lanky man with skin too dark to be Japanese and a gore-spattered lab coat. Another scientist. Fabulous.  
"What? Who are... wait! You're a vampire, aren't you?" Yamma said fearfully, stumbling back and then turning to a console on the wall.  
Kimiko jerked to a stop as she saw him pull a switch and then slam his hand onto a button. 'Oh no, now what?' She braced herself best she could, expecting a sudden burst of light or perhaps a heat vent to open up over her.  
Instead, there was a grinding noise as the two autopsy tables on either side of her tilted to one side, followed by the sound of something clicking open.  
Kimiko blinked as two blood-strewn corpses stumbled out from behind the curtains, groping for her clumsily as they moaned weakly.  
She raised an eyebrow. "Hmph. Creative. Not too bright, but creative." She calmly reached out and grasped each of the approaching undead by the forehead, briefly channeling a burst of psychic energy. "Did you really think you could turn ghouls against a vampire, even if I didn't create them myself?"  
Yamma scratched his head. "Ah, well... those aren't ghouls, you see, so the question is moot."  
"What?" Kimiko asked in confusion.  
_Crunch! Chomp!_  
The vampire's eye twitched in irritation as the zombies grasped onto her arms and started biting her, one biting into her bicep, while the other dugs its teeth into her shoulder.  
"They're zombies, you see. Not magical or anything; they're actually created using a very dangerous retrovirus." He shrugged. "I don't imagine you could control them."  
"I see," Kimiko deadpanned. Then she blasted one of the zombies away with a burst of telekinetic energy, slamming it against the wall and snapping its spine. The second one she shoved away, and then lashed out with a knife-hand strike to its chest, stabbing straight through the monster's heart and tearing out the other side.  
"Dispatching these things is quite unpleasant," Kimiko spat as she slowly withdrew her arm. "You'll pay for-Gyah!" As unseemly as it is for a lesser undead to shout in surprise due to a mere zombie, the vampiress lost all sense of decorum as the zombie on her arm apparently ignored the destruction of its heart and slid forward to make a lunge for her face.  
"Ack! Stop that, you filthy mongrel! Get OFF of me!" Her eyes glowed a brilliant red for a moment, and the zombie froze, its head suddenly trembling as if it was suddenly being subjected to great pressure.  
_Blorsh!_ Kimiko squeezed her eyes shut as the zombie's head imploded, gushing brains, blood, and bits of skin all over her face and chest.  
"..." She was silent for several seconds, then raised her hand up and slowly wiped it over her face. "Huh. I've never realized before just how disgusting these sorts of things really are." Grimacing, she concentrated briefly, and the gore spontaneously burst off her body as if from a jet of water.  
Sighing, she glanced back toward Yamma, and was about to speak when she felt something bite into her leg.  
"What the-HEY!" She growled as she saw the other zombie that had accosted her, which had apparently crawled back to her since its legs had been rendered useless. "Damnation! Why can't I sense you monsters if you're not true undead?!"  
_Clunk! Clunk! Ka-Clunk!_  
Her head whirled around again, and her eyebrow twitched as she saw the entrance to the elevator slam shut, no doubt with the foreign fellow inside... and three more tables tilting downward, releasing more moaning, staggering corpses.  
"I think I'm beginning to greater appreciate the humans' loathing of the undead," she mumbled to herself as the zombie below her chewed away on her calf. It was useless, of course; given her rate of regeneration, she couldn't be seriously hurt by much besides blessed silver. But the zombies were still a disgusting annoyance, and a minor impediment, which was probably just what the fellow in the lab coat had intended.  
'The hell with this; why am I putting up with these filthy drones?' She thought as her body started to dissociate into its mist form.  
_Wham! Wham!_  
Kimiko whipped around, choosing to ignore the zombies in favor of whatever threat seemed to be shattering a wall behind her.  
_Wham! WHAM! CRASH!_ "SHREEAAAGH!!" Hunter tore through the breach between rooms, heedlessly slicing through a water pipe and releasing a jet of cold water on himself as he landed on the blood-strewn floor of the autopsy lab.  
"Ugh... not YOU again," the vampiress spat as she kicked her leg to the side, flinging the zombie on her leg away (though she lost a good chunk of her calf with it).  
"Bleagh! Where'd all the water come from?" Usagi shouted as she pushed herself into the room. Naturally, she misjudged the width of the wall with all the water spraying out and obscuring her view, and her foot caught the edge, tripping her up and sending her tumbling right into Hunter.  
The zergling's claws twitched, and he turned to glare at the ponytailed cyborg silently, as if trying to communicate his desire to kill her against his orders.  
"Sorry! Sorry!" Usagi said quickly, scooting away from the alien and getting to her feet.  
Kimiko groaned. "Not more of you idiots... what is this place, some kind of circus sho-"  
_Chomp! Chomp! Crunch!_  
Usagi blinked as she watched three zombies latch onto the vampiress and start chewing on her arms and shoulder. "Huh? Why are those things eating her? I thought the zombie things and the vampires were supposed to be on the same side..."  
The nosferatu, for her part, was doing an excellent job of pretending that she didn't notice the three rotting corpses gnawing on her. "I think... yes. I've decided that I will no longer have ghouls feed on my victims in the future. Repulsive creatures, really. It's the least courtesy I could give to a human in its final moments."  
Usagi blinked some more. "Ghouls feed the what now?"  
"Never mind. I'll take my leave of you," she said curtly, fading away as her body slowly became incorporeal.  
Hunter snarled and crouched low to the ground as the zombies all stumbled forward into a pile on the floor.  
"Oh, no you don't!" Usagi shouted, suddenly raising up her arm.  
_Vvrt!_ A tube rolled out of her forearm, and then extended out in front of her.  
"You turn into mist and you get the vacuum treatment again, you hear me?"  
Kimiko, whose body was still corporal enough to maintain her normal appearance even if she was insubstantial, raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that the same arm you fired those odd green projectiles with?"  
"Oh, you SO asked for it!" The blonde growled. _Click! VwooooOOOOOOSH!_  
Kimiko blinked in shock as she felt a stream of suction disrupt the limited amount of control she was putting forth to maintain her shape, and then quickly solidified, shouting in surprise as the waiting zombies immediately started grappling her again.  
"What the hell? What are you?" _Crunch!_ She winced as one of the undead bit deep into the back of her neck and started gnawing on her spine.  
"Gah! ENOUGH!!" She suddenly stretched her arms out to either side, and the two zombies on her arms went flying into the air, smacking against the far walls. Then she closed her eyes and concentrated briefly.  
_Splort!_ Both corpses suddenly came apart in a messy pile of limbs, blood, and organs, as if they had been instantly chopped into pieces.  
"And now..." twisting around briefly, she grabbed the last zombie by its head and wrenched its jaws free from her precious spinal column, lifting it in the air as her back instantly sealed up over the damage.  
_Fwoosh!_ The undead was suddenly consumed in blue flames, and Usagi's eyes widened as skin and muscle seemed to burn away into ash, leaving bones slowly dropping to the ground, one by one.  
"Feh." She tossed the skull haphazardly to the side as it stopped snapping at her, and then turned back toward her pursuers, having quite a few questions for the blonde girl.  
_Whump!_ Instead, Hunter knocked her to the floor as he finally pounced, reaching down with talon and beak.  
"Ugh!" Usagi staggered back at the grisly sight as she saw the bloody slaughter that had been the end of every other vampire that had assaulted this level; claws tearing mercilessly, pounding back and forth like a jackhammer. Talons digging deep past muscle and bone, searching for soft, vulnerable organs. And the beak... well, it went straight for the head.  
"S-S-So much b-blood," she gasped, thankful that her new body apparently wasn't as quick to evacuate her stomach as her old one.

"SSSSHRRAAAA-"  
"**Silence**." _BWAM!_  
Usagi gasped as a blast of energy burst upward from the vampire's body like a cannon shot, bowling the zergling over and slamming him into one of the autopsy tables.  
She gulped as the vampiress slowly stood up with some difficulty. And it was no wonder; her body was in tatters, with her entire torso ripped open from throat to pelvis, and everything in-between shredded into gory pulp.  
"Y-You can get up... after all THAT?" Usagi squeaked.  
A single eye swiftly reformed among a caved-in face to stare at her as the surrounding bone fragments swiftly started shifting back into place.  
"Yes... Yes, I can," she mumbled as her neck sealed shut, allowing enough restriction of her air passage for her to talk. "THIS is what a vampire is, girl. Immortal. Indestructible. You cannot conquer me. You can only run. Run and wait for the dawn."  
"RAAAA-" Again, Kimiko drew her hand sharply to the side, and again, Hunter went flying as if hit with a wrecking ball, skidding and rolling across the floor toward the far wall. _WHANG!_  
The silver-haired midian turned back toward Usagi, who was trembling slightly. "You see now, don't you? My kind is invincible. You're nothing to us. Merely cattle, awaiting slaughter."  
She stepped forward, and Usagi stepped back, pressing her back up against the wall. Across the room, Hunter looked dazed, and one of his back-mounted arms had snapped off and was spilling thick, dark red blood on the floor.  
"You're all alone now, little girl," Kimiko said, the last of her body regenerating into soft, flawless, pale skin. Her dress too regenerated, spilling over her bare flesh, and showing no signs of the earlier bloodbath. "If you weren't alone, it wouldn't matter anyway. You'd get to see your friends die, too."  
Her eyes flared as they met with Usagi's, and the blonde cyborg felt her limbs go stiff.  
"Run away, girl," the vampiress snarled. "Run away, and pray for the dawn. Pray for the dawn while it's still there to keep us at bay; before the darkness descends permanently." Her lips curled into a smirk as she stared Usagi right in the face, their noses almost touching. "Run away, and live in fear. Fear will keep you alive. In the face of a menace that can't be destroyed, survival is all you have, isn't it?"  
She kept smirking as she leaned back again, pointed canines poking out from below her lip. "The DAPC have made enemies of our kind. You... we could care less about. Why die uselessly saving a bunch of misfits and morons? Even among humans, these men and women are despised. Go home and pursue your own fate. Your efforts are useless."  
Usagi continued staring at the vampiress fearfully, her breathing even despite the adrenaline surge that was pounding into her brain.  
'Fighting... useless. Survival... matters. Got to get away. Got to RUN! I have to-'  
And then her eyes shrank as she felt a tingling sensation run down her back. A neural purge.

_Thwack!_ Kimiko was only moderately surprised when the blonde suddenly punched her hard in the cheek, caving in that portion of her skull and spinning her around briefly.  
She staggered briefly from the sheer force of the punch, and then lolled her head back to stare at the girl as her cheek swelled back into place again.  
"You're lying," Usagi said simply, glaring at the woman through narrowed eyes.  
"I'm what?"  
"You're lying!" She accused louder, standing up straight. "It's not useless, and you're not invincible!" She clenched her teeth. "I've SEEN invincible, and it falls down like anything else when you hit it hard enough! You're not killing anyone!" She drew her arms up over her chest, scowling. "I'm Cyber Moon, and you're finished!"  
"'Cyber Moon'? What kind of a name is-"  
_Chak! Chak!_  
Kimiko's eyes widened as two narrow racks stacked with mini-missiles popped up out of Cyber Moon's shoulders. "What the blazes?!"  
_Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!_ The missiles started firing at high speed as the racks retracted back into the cyborg's shoulders, the projectile at the bottom launching right before the next was dropped into position to take off.  
Kimiko leapt back and swiped at the incoming ordnance, wincing as the wave of telekinetic power detonated all of them at a distance that couldn't be considered even remotely safe.  
_Woosh! Woosh!_ She was off-balance enough that she missed her chance to destroy the next series of missiles, all of which blasted through the dust and flames of the first wave and curled around as they homed in on their target.  
_Bwoom! Bwoom! BLAM! Boom!_ The vampiress let out a shriek as her body was torn apart and incinerated, and her eyes took on an unearthly red glow.  
"DIE!! DIE, YOU METAL MONSTROSITY!!" She screamed. A moment later, a massive shockwave burst from her body, tearing the nearby tables and equipment apart and annihilating all the missiles en route.  
Cyber Moon grunted as she was blasted back into the wall, and screamed briefly as she felt an unidentifiable force tear at her chest and abdomen, ripping partly through her armor.  
After a moment, the energy dissipated, and she staggered forward, glaring across the room at the pair of crimson eyes that were quickly getting their body back.  
+Damage report: Enemy unit has emitted a high-frequency telekinetic burst - direct hit. Trauma classification: Low-level concussive and slashing damage incurred. Minor external damage incurred. Total systems down: 2. Kinetic dampeners still offline. Autorepair systems inadequate.+  
'Can the spider-thingies fix it?' She asked mentally, standing up straight again.  
+Affirmative.+  
'Then get busy,' she demanded as another apparatus folded out of her shoulderblade; it looked like the servo arm from before, but had a drum-shaped magazine with a large barrel near the top.  
Kimiko snarled as her hair started to float in the air behind her from the waves of power gathering around her hands. Her mantle whipped about, as if grasping for prey, and her eyes glowed a brilliant bloody crimson. "I possess far more power than what I've bothered to use so far. You CAN'T beat me, little girl."  
The vampiress was mildly disturbed when the cybernetic superheroine stared back at her fearlessly through eyes that glowed a fantastic blue in the laboratory's dim lighting. Tiny mechanical spiders scrambled over her scarred chest as they spat out showers of sparks, and another strange weapon loomed over the blonde's shoulder, rocking back and forth slightly on its servos as if in anticipation.  
The cyborg smiled. "I'm not alone."  
Before Kimiko could ask what she was talking about, an ear-splitting shriek reached her ears, and she remembered the attack beast across the room just before said attack beast slashed and severed her leg at the knee.  
Screaming, she blasted the creature away once again with a bolt of blue fire, and in doing so missed a crucial window as Cyber Moon fired her weapon and blasted a big whopping anti-matter grenade at her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuxedo Kamen frowned deeply as he stared down at the shattered DAPC headquarters; several squad cars were wrecked, smoke was pouring out of broken windows, and the lights on some levels flickered erratically. The entire building looked a mess, and he had only the vague sense that Sailor Moon was in there somewhere, and in danger.  
"Not good. Close-quarters fighting really isn't my forte..."  
Leaping from one rooftop to the next, he scanned the windows, searching for any convenient targets that could be taken out from a safe distance.  
"Tch! Nothing. Either they're avoiding the windows, or all the fighting's going on deeper inside."  
A brief burst of gunfire, muted from having passed through several walls, indicated the latter.  
"Damn! What should I do?"  
Standing up, Tuxedo Kamen rubbed his chin as he considered his options.  
His noble, heroic instincts taken from the emotional baggage of a past life encouraged him to charge into the building cane a-swingin' and fight off all enemies that dared to threaten his beloved Sailor Moon. Nearly every other instinct and rationalization indicated that if he went in there he'd be swiss cheese. He had no idea who the enemy was, how many there were, or what they were armed with. For that matter, he was just as likely to get blasted by the police officers themselves, either because they could mistake him for an enemy, or just from running into that psychotic Snake person.  
"This doesn't look good..." he mumbled to himself. And the longer he waited for something to happen to change the situation, the longer Usagi had to fend for herself without his doubtlessly essential support.  
Luckily, he didn't have to wait very long.

_BWA-KOOOOOM!!!_  
A large chunk of the corner of the building burst outward, and a wave of gray energy spilled out into the cool night air, taking a good number of windows and walls with it.  
Tuxedo Kamen gaped as hot, scorched rubble plummeted to the empty streets, while at the same time a thick cloud of dust briefly obscured the gutted building.  
Then a figure flew out of the obscuring dust, twisting gracefully as her body - which seemed to be mostly missing - grew from a burnt torso into a full, healthy human form. Clothing materialized around her out of nowhere, and a silky white mantle unfurled around her neck.  
'Huh. Don't see that every day.'  
_Voooooosh!_  
Usagi darted out of the building a moment later, turning in midair as the rocket boosters on her back adjusted themselves and left her hovering at around the fifth floor of the HQ, two stories below Kamen. Her eyes were still glowing a bright blue, and there was now an energy shield roughly four feet in height attached to her wrist.  
'Hmm... actually, I don't see that everyday either.' Looking over at his sort-of fiancee's new outfit for the first time, he had to admit that he liked the new costume a lot, although it still made him quite uncomfortable to realize that Usagi was flying around in the air using some kind of built in jet pack.  
'That's not important right now,' he chided himself and readied his roses.

'Computer, do you think the monster thing was okay? I didn't know the explosion would be THAT big! If you hadn't warned me to turn on my shield I would've been finished!'  
+Life signs indicate that unit Hunter sustained non-lethal damage in the blast. It will survive. The destruction of enemy units takes full priority.+  
Cyber Moon winced and idly wondered if there was some sort of personality tweak she could give the computer in her brain. It didn't sit well with her that the programming so easily justified hurting friendly fighters so long as she got a good shot in against her foe.  
'She's STILL regenerating! What does it take to put this woman down for good?' As she complained to the cybernetic voice in her head that the enemy kept repairing itself, her own repair drones finished sealing her armor, and they skittered over her breasts and back into the deployment bays on her shoulders.  
+Kinetic dampeners back online. Processing query... Vampire units are vulnerable to the element silver, items imbued with certain blessings stemming primarily from the Christian faith, and normally garlic. Earlier analysis would indicate that the target is sufficiently powerful to resist the effects of even concentrated garlic solutions.+  
'Fine! So do I have a Christian Cannon or something?'  
+Negative. Unit Cyber Moon is not equipped with anti-midian weaponry aside from the earlier acquired garlic solution countermeasure.+  
'Which doesn't work, right?' She asked, sighing as she watched the vampiress finish healing completely and fling a barrage of blue fireballs at her.  
+Affirmative. Running full scan on enemy target. Please wait...+  
Cyber Moon twitched as she blasted out of the way of the fireballs, shooting toward her enemy. "I don't have time to wait! Oooh... Fine!" _Fzash!_  
Kimiko grimaced as the cyborg girl activated some sort of energy blade out of her free hand as she zoomed toward her. 'Where the bloody hell is she keeping all those weapons? I don't know how much longer I can keep regenerating from near-complete destruction like this!'  
Slashing in a wide upward arc as she got close, Cyber Moon was startled to see the wispy silk mantle suddenly whip around and block the strike, sizzling against the searing edge of the power blade.  
Kimiko suddenly thrust her palm at her foe, but to both combatants' surprise, Cyber Moon only jolted briefly in the air from the attempt at telekinesis.  
'Whoa, what was that?' Usagi thought as she slashed again, wrenching her blade away from the mantle and then rocketing backward to gain distance.  
+The telekinetic pulse was absorbed by unit Cyber Moon's kinetic dampeners.+  
'I can DO that?'  
+Affirmative. Kinetic impacts without physical mass behind them are ineffective so long as the dampeners remain online.+  
'So does that mean that she can't do that thing where she glares at me and I explode?'  
+This unit is currently occupied conducting extensive scans of the enemy unit. Recommend that unit Cyber Moon cease redundant tactical queries until scanning is complete.+  
Usagi had just finished figuring out what that meant when she realized there was a screaming ball of hellfire coming down on top of her, and barely managed to raise her shield in time to absorb the blast.  
Readjusting her boosters to keep the impact from sending her back into the HQ, she angled herself upward and started to gain altitude again. 'Huh. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this flying thing.'  
Kimiko's hands started to charge with energy again when she suddenly felt several pinpricks of pain that indicated something had pierced her back.  
She didn't turn around or glance at the weapons that had hit her; none of objects had struck anything important, and she wasn't about to risk being distracted again in front of the air-headed walking armory she was fighting.  
"PERISH!" She shouted suddenly, lashing out with an ultra-fine wave of telekinetic power that **should** have sliced the annoying girl clean in two. Instead the cyborg merely twitched at the impact, and then blasted forward through the air, stabbing with that energy blade of hers.  
"Sailor Moon!" Tuxedo Kamen shouted down from the rooftops above the dueling women, "Know that no matter how strong-"  
"Tuxedo Kamen!" Cyber Moon shouted back suddenly as the midian's mantle again blocked the strike. "Not now, okay?!" She pulled back for another strike, and then raised her shield hastily as the mantle twisted into the shape of a lance and then stabbed at her repeatedly. "Ack! I need to concentrate here! Whoa!"  
She turned as the mantle managed to score a hit on her shoulder, and managed to slice across her opponent's belly before the strange and resilient fashion accessory returned to smash into her face.  
"Ow! No WAY that's real silk!" she complained as she gained distance again.  
Kimiko snarled and floated forward, ignoring another series of pinpricks as more projectiles pierced her side.  
Cyber Moon frowned at the sight of the numerous roses sticking into the vampiress, apparently to no effect. "Tuxedo Kamen, she's too strong! Go into the building and help the others!"  
"Wh-What?" Kamen asked as the dueling intensified, with the midian's strange mantle slashing and stabbing faster as Usagi was pushed onto the defensive. "But I can't! You're-"  
"Please! They might need help! Agh!" She cried out as the mantle slammed into her chest, causing a brief shower of sparks as it stabbed through her armor and sent her flying backward through the air. _Wham!_  
Tuxedo Kamen winced as the blonde cyborg slammed into the HQ building, and he readied more roses. "You there!" He shouted at the platinum-haired woman, "You won't get away with that! Justice will always triumph over the darkness!" He unleashed another wave of a half-dozen roses at her, which sailed through the air with perfect accuracy.  
"Hmmm..." Kimiko briefly waved her hand in the direction of the projectiles, and they all stopped short and then plummeted down into the street. "So you're the insect that's been stinging me..." she waved her hands again, and all the roses already impaling her slipped free out of her wounds, hanging in the air briefly as the bright red petals and lush green stems suddenly wilted and dried in the moonlight before dropping down to join the earlier batch.  
"You know, this battle has been QUITE exhausting. I could use a quick snack," she said amiably, revealing a smile that would have seemed downright pleasant if her canines hadn't been visibly growing into large, needle-like fangs.  
Tuxedo Kamen said nothing, readying his cane for defense as the nosferatu floated down toward him.  
_FWEEOOOOM!_ Kimiko barely jolted back in time to avoid being bisected by a bright red laser beam, and she glared angrily at Cyber Moon as the cyborg once again rose up behind her with yet ANOTHER weapon mounted on one of the servo arms that extended out of her shoulderblades.  
"Tuxedo Kamen, GO! I can handle this! Go help the police!" She insisted as the mini-missile racks again slid up out of her shoulders.  
_Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!_  
Kimiko growled as she released wave after wave of kinetic blasts through the air, stopping and detonating each volley of missiles before they got close, but failing to scratch the blonde herself.  
'This is ridiculous! Just what the hell IS she?'

--------------------------------------------------------------------

'This is ridiculous! Just what the hell IS she?' Tuxedo Kamen thought as he leapt down to a lower roof to better search for entry into the HQ. 'I knew Usagi said she was a cyborg, but... but that's...'  
Suffice to say, it had been a little hard to swallow before. Usagi still seemed like Usagi; he had only Ami's analysis and the brief ejection of coolant gases to confirm that the bizarre tale was true.  
He had even begun to regret his initial rejection of her. After all, she seemed like the same girl in appearance, touch, and personality. Was she not still the Moon Princess? He had considered at great length that maybe the cyborg thing wasn't even such a big deal. If he could live with constant monster attacks, evil plots for planetary domination/destruction, and the knowledge that his destined lover was some reincarnated magic space princess, really, was loving a cyborg space princess such a stretch?  
What he had just seen made him reconsider his reconsideration. Usagi wasn't just the same girl with a metal skeleton. She was a walking arsenal, bristling with guns and missiles! A month ago she would have been sobbing on the ground at fighting an enemy as resilient as the vampire woman, just **waiting** for him to show up and prop up her confidence before striking the killing blow.  
But this Usagi was different. She was standing on her own legs and had apparently embraced these new powers that had been forced upon her. Tuxedo Kamen didn't like this at all. Things were changing too quickly, and he felt like he was being left behind instead of being brought into the spotlight like he normally was.  
'Then again, I suppose it's no surprise I haven't been able to keep up with things, given how much time I've spent in the hospital having bullets removed,' he thought ruefully.  
Then, as if in response to that thought, a gunshot rang out, and Tuxedo Kamen collapsed onto the rooftop in agony.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Snake clicked his tongue as he lowered his pistol away from the shattered window. "Drat. I think I missed the headshot. It's too dark out there."  
Junko blinked. "Lieutenant? What was that? Another vampire?"  
"Yeah. Unless you can think of anyone else who might be skulking about the rooftops around our HQ at night."  
"No, not really," the redhead admitted.  
_Blam! Blam!_  
Kyle grimaced as more gunfire came from up the hall. "C'mon! We have to hurry!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

_Blam! Blam!_  
Asuka nodded slightly to herself as the vampire that had wandered into the hall staggered back, a good portion of its head missing from the two .50 caliber slugs that had plowed through its head.  
_Poof!_ Then it vanished into smoke.  
Asuka blinked, instantly concerned. That vampire had left no remains; no blood, no dust, nothing but brackish blue smoke that rapidly dissipated into nothing.  
Someone less experienced may have shrugged off the sight as merely a vampire dying in a slightly different way, but Asuka was fairly certain things didn't work like that; the kill had been practically given to her. The vampire had walked right into the hall at a calm strolling speed as if he was heading for the break room, not navigating a battlefield.  
Her concern was thoroughly vindicated when the exact same vampire strolled into the hallway a moment later and grinned at her.  
Steeling herself, Asuka glanced behind her and held her aim steady.  
"What? You're not gonna shoot?" The midian said pleasantly. He was of average height and rather muscular, and wore normal street clothes along with a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses and a hairstyle that looked as if it required a copious amount of gel.  
"That depends; you have any more twins back there?" Asuka deadpanned. "I'd really like to take care of you all at once."  
The vampire suddenly laughed uproariously, and several more vampires just like him snickered as they walked into the hallway behind him and joined their copy. "Man, you've got guts! No wonder you scum didn't fold easy! Ha!"  
The eight Shios all licked their lips briefly, and one of them on the left spoke. "You'll make a fine meal, you will. Say, you wouldn't happen to be a virgin, would you?"  
"No, sorry; I'm not quite THAT bitter and lonely," Asuka said evenly, not wavering in her aim. Initially she was tempted to fire at the one that spoke, but there was no way her opponent would make it that easy. She had one clip of ammo left, which was enough to eliminate every one of the images before her, but taking them out one by one would take precious time. Time which could be spent running down a hallway and closing to slashing/biting distance. And if she was caught trying to reload...  
Well, there was no need for such clumsy tactics. There was a reason she left the major gunplay to Snake.  
The Shio copies started stalking forward, dagger-like fangs extending out of their mouths as they walked, stepping ever faster as the blue-haired woman failed to retaliate.  
'Ha ha! Stupid humans! In the end, you'll always lose!' Shio smirked viciously, and the seven others did so at the exact same time.  
Asuka did her best to focus on the incoming target, which was becoming increasingly hard as she fought the urge to look down at the vampires' feet and possibly give away her trap. Through peripheral vision she could see the first three "vampires" step through the claymore tripwire without incident, apparently not even noticing as their incorporeal bodies slipped around the length of steel.  
"Still not gonna fire?" Shio asked gleefully. "If you don't hurry you're gonna-" _Twang!_ "-die?"  
_Boom!_ All but three of the Shios vanished as their gaseous forms were blasted away by the small explosion and subsequent rain of fragments, and the midian staggered back away from the blast, more out of surprise than from any actual injury.  
Asuka couldn't help but smirk as she centered her aim on the one vampire that had pieces of shrapnel lodged in him instead of small, rapidly sealing holes.  
_Blam! Blam!_  
Shio staggered back some more, this time due to real injury, as two high-caliber rounds pounded into his heart, plowing right through his ribcage and ejecting bloody chunks of the precious organ out his back.  
Asuka's smirk faded as the abomination failed to fall down, but instead stabilized himself and glared at her.  
"Do you have any idea how much that **stings**?" He snapped, wiping some bits of gore off of his bloody shirt as the hole in his skin quickly began to seal itself.  
"I'll take your word for it," Asuka said, pulling back her pistol and then fumbling with it as if trying to reload.  
Shio suddenly jumped onto the wall, and then pushed off mightily with his legs, rocketing down the hall and rebounding off the opposite wall to further propel himself.  
Asuka raised her weapon - not really empty, of course - and unloaded the last two bullets in her magazine, feeling extremely smug as she winged the midian in mid-leap and send him careening to the floor, the Desert Eagle's stopping power enough to completely throw him off-course.  
Noting that the vampire had crashed a mere two meters away and was still rolling toward her, Asuka kicked the drawer out of the filing cabinet she was using as a barricade.  
_Clang!_ Shio grunted as the metal box slammed into his head, wondering just how much longer he was going to have to suffer these minor, if effective inconveniences during his assault.  
_Clink!_  
As he craned his head to stare at the flashbang grenade that rolled out of the drawer (and away from the pin that was taped to its interior), he guessed that it would be quite a while longer.  
_BANG!_  
Asuka covered her ears briefly as the stun grenade went off, and then pushed herself to her feet, ejecting the empty magazine to her pistol as the nosferatu groaned and fumbled about blindly.  
_C-Click! Blam! Blam! Blam!_ The midian screamed as his head was ripped apart, and staggered to the ground, completely senseless.

'He's not turning into dust,' Asuka noted with considerable annoyance. The vampire's head was obviously regenerating, although it was doing so relatively slowly.  
'Should I call Ranma out, or try and blow the rest of his head away? How many explosives do I have left, anyway?'  
She had just begun searching her belt for another grenade when she spotted... SOMETHING coming out the wall behind her out of a heating vent. It was pitch black, and seemed to ooze through the slots before settling into the floor, like a circular shadow being cast by an object that simply wasn't there.  
"Now that CAN'T be good," the police captain remarked, holding her weapon at the ready.  
Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later as the shadow suddenly bulged upward, forming a humanoid shape out of wispy darkness.  
'How many of these idiots are they throwing at us?' Asuka thought as her mind raced. 'I mean, apparently they've been churning these freaks out like automobiles, but when did vampires start using massed assaults?'  
The sound of rapid footsteps alerted her to someone coming from the route of attack she had been prepared for, and a quick glance revealed the two vampires that had survived the original assault charging into the hall.  
Instead of turning around, she focused all her attention on the nosferatu materializing in front of her, mentally judging the speed of the vampires charging from behind.  
"NOW!!" _Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Click!_

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The two young vampires didn't fail to notice that the blue-haired woman had seen them, and then appeared to totally dismiss them.  
Had this occurred a half-hour earlier, the midians might have thoughtlessly pushed forward, heedless of any possible preparations that the very resourceful police captain may have made.  
After having experienced their fair share of Asuka's resourcefulness and nearly dying as a result, they were understandably concerned about where the pigtailed fellow was, especially after the captain shouted "Now!"  
"Grk!" They got their answer as a pair of legs suddenly swung down from the ceiling and wrapped around the bald-headed vampire's neck, stopping his dash for the barricade.  
Ranma threw his remaining kodachi into the second vampire's back, severing his spine just above the pelvis and paralyzing his legs. Then he twisted his legs sharply, snapping his first victim's neck before he dropped the undead onto the floor.  
'That should stop them for a minute or two,' he reasoned, drawing the Jackal as he turned toward Asuka.  
Instead he saw a larger vampire staring down at him, pieces of a shattered pair of sunglasses hanging off of a slowly regenerating skull.  
Ranma blinked. "Weren't you on the ground a second ago?"  
The vampire stared back through his one remaining eye as small splinters of bone slowly grew upward to conceal a throbbing, blood-soaked brain mass.  
"You weren't here at all a second ago, so who are you to judge?" Said a voice from behind him.  
Ranma frowned deeply as he registered a second vampire behind him. He had been watching from the ceiling before, so he knew how the clones worked, same as Asuka, but the blasted things all had the same aura as the original, or at least appeared so to his ki senses, making it impossible for him to tell which one was real at a glance.  
"You brats are getting REALLY annoying," Shio snarled as another copy of his slowly reconstructing form flickered into being to Ranma's right.  
"You can't stop us, so stop struggling!" Another spat as he appeared on the left and behind the pigtailed cop.  
"Your weapons are useless, your bodies are weak, and your little tricks only slow us down!" Another on the left, but this time in front.  
"Give up!" The Shios growled as dark blue energy began to gather around their hands. "Just give up and die!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Yamato grimaced as the holes in his body slowly shrank into nothing. "How unpleasant..." Grunting, he stepped toward the blue-haired woman, who was fumbling with something at her belt, and reached out for her neck.  
_Psht!_ "Gwagh!" He immediately lurched back and squeezed his eyes shut as searing agony assaulted his face, and swiped blindly at his prey in his confusion.  
Asuka dodged the predictable sweep of his arms, then smashed into the vampire's chin with a right cross, twisting and sweeping the midian's feet right afterward.  
Instead of hitting the floor hard, like any corporeal creature should have, Asuka blanched as the nosferatu dropped down into his own shadow, as if he had fallen into a hole.  
"Crap! Now what?"  
The shadow suddenly lurched toward her, and the police captain stepped up onto the barricade of filing cabinets before jumping off and over the patch of darkness, leaving it to zip under her... and then under the barricade as well.  
"What?" She blinked, and then clenched her teeth. "Damn! Saotome, look out!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Ranma glanced around him as the vampire copies glowed with power.  
To his senses, the copies were real vampires when he knew that at least most of them weren't, so he also assumed that whatever the midians were about to throw at him were mostly illusions too, even though his senses were warning him that he was about to be pulverized by energy blasts from all directions.  
'Still...' there was the chance he was wrong, of course. But all the clones were out of arm's reach, and he no longer had his blade; if he attacked in one direction and guessed wrong, he'd leave his back wide open.  
'Did they know that I can sense life force? How is he managing this?' Ranma thought in frustration. 'There's no way some illusions should have the same aura as a real vampire, much less-'  
He blinked in surprise as he came to a sudden epiphany, and his brow furrowed.  
"What IS that? Is that a bat? A bat with a vampire's aura?"  
Ignoring the bug-eyed looks he got from the surrounding Shios, he raised the Jackal toward a shadowy upper corner of the hall, where a small black bat froze in shock.  
_BLAM!_ The creature let out a sharp squeak as it was annihilated by the silver slug, splattering its tiny body all over the wall before what little mass it had in that form disintegrated into a prodigious amount of dust, settling down in the far corner of the hall in a pile.  
"Gah! Errgh!" The Shio copies all staggered backward as if in sudden pain, their bodies fading into nothingness as the energies sustaining them dissipated permanently.  
Ranma raised an eyebrow as his enemies vanished. "Huh. That wasn't so hard."  
"Damn! Saotome, look out!"  
The pigtailed cop whirled around into a defensive stance, but failed to see anything but Asuka's panicked expression before one of his legs suddenly sank into the floor.  
"What the hell?" Ranma tried to pull his leg out of the pool of shadows underneath, but a hand of black pitch rose from the darkness and clutched his knee tightly, dragging him down further.  
"Hey! Leggo!" He shouted, beating on the mysterious appendage and tugging even harder.  
Then he jolted in agony, and his face paled slightly.  
"OW!! That hurt, you bastard!" He screamed, tossing his gun to the side and shoving both arms down into the darkness.

Asuka's mind raced and her heart pounded in her chest as she watched the struggle across the hall, desperately grasping for something to do about it; while she had a few strategies and well-placed ordnance left, none of them took into account that Ranma would be the one having trouble with the enemy, much less that the enemy would be some sort of magical pit of darkness, or whatever the hell this new vampire had turned into.  
She also noted with growing alarm that the formerly incapacitated vampire near her had managed to wrench the kodachi out of his back, even if his legs refused to budge. The other, bald-headed one was already clambering to his feet, and she had no ammunition left; her only remaining weapons were her combat knife and the anti-vampire spray.  
'This is bad! Ranma's flank is completely exposed! Assuming the shadow doesn't kill him, either one of those other idiots could do it, and all I can do is stumble over there like Seras is doing now and spray-' that train of thought derailed as she realized that yes, the DAPC's medical officer had just walked past her, climbed over the barricade, and was walking down the hall to the stairs like nothing was happening.

The bald-headed vampire noticed this as well, and stared as the scientist strolled right past him.  
He snarled, and reached out to grab the man, when something took his shoulder from behind and tripped him up at the same time, slamming him into the floor.  
Asuka forewent the garlic spray and jammed her combat knife straight into the midian's back, eliciting a shriek of pain as the blade dug through bone to stab shallowly into the undead's vulnerable heart.  
Gritting her teeth, Asuka stood up and then stamped down hard on the knife handle, piercing the heart completely. "Tuko! Do something! Help Saotome!"

Seras blinked and then glanced to his left, where Ranma appeared to be grappling with a pair of solid black hands reaching out from a pool of shadow. The black limbs seemed to be winning, by virtue of the fact that his arms were covered in bloody gashes, whereas if the darkness had suffered any damage, it wasn't at all apparent.  
"Now honestly, what do you expect ME to do about this?" The drunk asked irritably, scratching his head. "He's fighting a bloody shadow. I mean, that's just silly. You should learn to pick your battles more wisely, Saotome."  
"Shut up and help me!" Ranma growled, punching again into the pool of darkness and again feeling nothing meet his fists. It was as if he was punching into an empty pool of water, though at least his arms didn't get stuck like his leg was.  
Seras sighed. "What do you want me to do?"  
"ANYTHING!" Ranma shouted, glancing at his gun. He would have tried blasting a ki bolt down into the shadow, but was more than a little concerned with tearing off his own leg in the blast. "Hurry up! That thing's sucking my blood out, I can feel it!"  
Seras considered this for a moment before fumbling around in the deep pockets of his lab coat. "Fighting a shadow, huh? Maybe..." pulling out a small flashlight, he turned it toward the black pool and flipped it on.  
"Sheeeeeah!" A high-pitch shriek filled the room as the shadow wavered under the light, and Ranma suddenly flew back as his leg was freed from whatever was holding it down.  
Asuka winced immediately when she saw the state of his leg; his pants were ragged strips, soaked through with blood, while deep gashes and a prominent set of teeth marks adorned his calf.  
Stepping over quickly, Asuka took out the garlic spray and pointed it toward the writhing black liquid.  
_Psht!_  
If the light had irritated the shadow, the garlic spray had sent it into a conniption fit, and the darkness suddenly bulged and bubbled as it slithered away from Asuka, rapidly growing outward into a humanoid shape that staggered away from the police captain like a man moving through knee-deep mud.  
When Yamato's form had stabilized, he painfully opened his eyes to judge where he was going, his senses sent completely off-kilter by the spray.  
_Klack!_ His vision cleared just in time to stare down the barrel of a 13mm. handgun, and moaned pitifully as Ranma glared at him from behind the weapon. _BLAM!_

Seras frowned as Yamato slowly slumped to his knees, his head demolished by the gunshot and the silver bullet precluding any possibility of regeneration. "That was rather anticlimactic. You should have said something before you shot him. Like 'Nobody eats my leg and gets away with it,' or 'End of the line, you overgrown mosquito.'"  
Ranma sweatdropped. "Oh, shut up. And what took you so long with the flashlight?"  
"What do you mean 'what took me so long'? I didn't see you coming up with any obvious weaknesses!" Seras snapped back.  
"You're supposed to be the brainy guy, why didn't-"  
"Last one's getting away," Asuka deadpanned, interrupting Ranma.  
The pigtailed man whirled around, then bit his tongue from the pain of moving with his leg in its current condition.  
By the time the agony in his tendons lessened from "crippling" to "mind-numbing," the only remaining vampire slipped around the corner and beyond the reach of his pistol.  
"Damn," Ranma hissed, gently lowering himself into a sitting position to keep himself from putting weight on his injury.  
_Wham!_  
Asuka, Seras, and Ranma all turned and looked back down the hall as the "escaped" midian went flying through the air and then slammed into the wall painfully.  
_BLAM!! BLAM!! BLAM!!_  
Snake glanced up the hall as he stepped around the corner, and then grinned at the vampire that was swiftly turning to dust around his pulverized torso. "Buffy, eat your heart out."  
Asuka sighed. "Took you long enough."  
"Yeah, well, there were a few traps that the bloodsuckers hadn't triggered, and I was outvoted three-to-one on my plan to just let the Commander charge forward and take the hits instead of having me disarm them," the Texan said bitterly.  
"Where did you GET all those mines and bombs anyway?" Junko asked as she followed Kyle and Tiro around the bend. "You don't seriously carry that much ordnance around with you in the office, do you?"  
The blue-haired woman rolled her eyes. "You can thank the good Lieutenant for that; he leaves bombs and stacks of ammunition all over HQ."  
Snake smirked. "For precisely this reason!"  
"No, because you're constantly ordering more than we can store properly!" Asuka snapped as the other officers sweatdropped from hearing the familiar argument.  
"So what? It came in handy tonight, didn't it?"  
"I only used most of those mines so that the enemy couldn't use them against us instead!"  
"Eh, all's well that ends well, right?" Snake asked finally, smiling in such a manner that made Asuka wish that she had some ammunition left in her sidearm.  
"_Ahem!_"  
The officers all turned toward Ranma, who was seated against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest as he glared up at them.  
"What? You want to get on my case too? I didn't even blow you up this time!" Snake said defensively.  
Ranma's eye twitched. "I want a damn Band-aid or something! I'm frikkin' bleeding to death here!"  
"Fine, fine. Hold your horses, you big baby..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Gwaaah!" Cyber Moon cried out as she was sent hurtling through the air, spinning too wildly for her thrusters to compensate for.  
_WHAM! Crash!_ Plowing through the wall of an office building - closed for the night, of course - she rolled across the floor and slammed into a desk before stopping dead, the last of her momentum spent.  
"Owwww..." she moaned as she pushed herself up, surprised as usual at how easy it was to get back on her feet; as a human, even a magical human, getting hit that hard was always followed by a at least a moment of physical weakness, but her cybernetic body never seemed to slow down.  
'That hit was pretty bad... hey, can I get a damage report?' she thought as she dusted glass shards and splinters off herself.  
+Internal scanning will interfere with current processes. Tactical scan currently has priority. Override?+  
Cyber Moon scowled, but answered in the negative. 'Sure is taking a long time to get that stupid scanning done. I don't know how much longer I can hold her off! It's much harder fighting her in the air than in the building!'  
As she blasted outside again, she glanced around for her opponent, not seeing anything.  
"Oh no... did she fly back into the building? Dang it!" She frowned and contemplated asking her computer to locate the vampiress, but just knew it would complain more about its scanning being interrupted.  
Gently putting more power into her rockets, she floated forward toward the partially gutted HQ building; she and the vampire woman had ended up flying down the street about a block from the target structure, being far too involved in eradicating the other to worry about where the battle was headed. "I guess I should get back and see if I can-ACK!" She covered her face as a swarm of bats suddenly descending on her from behind, fluttering around her wildly in a cyclone of leathery wings and black fur.  
"Eww! Yuck! Get away! Gross!" Usagi flailed about randomly as the bats continued to harass her, none of them going for the bite, but instead buffeting her behind waves of leathery wings.  
Just as Usagi was about to launch a desperate query for any weapons with which to disperse the swarm, the bats suddenly dispersed on their own.  
Cyber Moon blinked rapidly, her arms still held in front of her face as the gentle roar of her boosters filled the empty streets.  
The cloud of bats hadn't just dispersed; they were GONE. As if someone had flipped a lightswitch and turned them off. "What? Where did-"  
_Crunch!_  
Her eyes widened as dagger-sharp teeth punched into her neck from behind, but as she tried to pull away, two hands grabbed onto her arms and held her firm.  
"EEEYAAAAAAH!!" Usagi screamed as Kimiko bit deeper and then pulled her head away, tearing out a good chunk of the cyborg's neck amongst a shower of sparks before the vampiress threw her down into a nearby rooftop.  
_Wham!_  
Kimiko spat her current mouthful out into her hand, and she grimaced at the mass of metal plates, wires, and tubes that she had torn out underneath the thin scraps of skin and Cyber Moon's outfit. The mass was stained with numerous fluids from the severed tubes, and though some of it looked like blood, the nosferatu relented from tasting it, instead tossing the mass haphazardly to the side.  
"Huh. I don't think I'll be making an undead out of her anytime soon," she said to herself. Then she twitched in annoyance and reached into her mouth to pull out a length of wire that was stuck in her teeth.

Cyber Moon gasped weakly as she pushed herself to her feet once more, the throbbing in her neck being far more severe than any other pain she had felt as a cyborg.  
Reaching up to massage the wound, she froze stiff when she felt wet and jagged bits of metal and torn wires where there should have been skin and tendons (or whatever passed for tendons when one was mostly machine).  
Her breathing would have increased rapidly along with her sense of panic, except that a good part of her respiratory piping had just been torn apart. Instead she continued gasping frightfully, her eyes wide as she felt over the extensive damage.  
_Whrr!_ The bays on her shoulders opened up, and her repair drones rapidly crawled over to her neck before poking her hand, causing her to reflexively draw it away from the wound.  
_Pshoooot!_ Crawling into the gaping hole in her neck, the drones started releasing a thin foam over the exposed components, coating the broken tubes and wires to prevent further leakage and damage.  
Though Usagi wasn't really done panicking yet, her computer suddenly beeped pleasantly, and text started scrolling before her.  
+Enemy scan complete. Previous-+  
"The hell with the enemy! Am I okay?" She cried, forgetting to keep her query strictly mental this time.  
+Unit Cyber Moon has suffered limited structural and internal damage. Circulatory functions are at 80. Respiratory functions are at 60. Bio-stabilizers have made the necessary adjustments. Movement and reaction speed is down 17.8. Damage area has been contained.+  
The blonde cyborg allowed herself to relax slightly, and then stared up at Kimiko, who had turned around and was floating back to the HQ building. 'Well, that's not bad, I guess. What took you so long with scanning that woman?'  
+Tests had to be drawn from secondary archives and limited battlefield data, and then compared to recent observations without the benefit of a direct biological sample.+  
'Okay... I don't know what that means. So what did you find out?'  
+This vampire unit possesses superior regenerative capabilities that preclude any small arms as a tactical threat without the aid of silver or blessed ammunition. Superior energy stores may allow her to continue regeneration of weak points indefinitely, making target elimination impossible with many weapons.+  
+The enemy unit can regenerate nearly any amount of damage to the heart or brain so long as a given amount of brain mass survives complete cellular breakdown; scans suggest that even if the heart is completely destroyed, the target's brain can facilitate its reconstruction.+  
Cyber Moon took a brief moment to try and crane her head to get a good look at the drones working furiously on her neck before she gave up and decided to just let them do their job. 'So what do I do?'  
+In order to affect complete target termination, the brain must be completely destroyed on a cellular level. Disruptor cannons and anti-matter weaponry should be effective with a direct hit.+

That was all Cyber Moon needed to hear, and with a powerful jump, her boosters activated and sent her sailing toward the floating midian.  
Kimiko had been expecting the girl to get back up ever since she'd heard the persistent blonde ask herself if she was okay - whatever that was about - and turned around to meet her.  
"About time you got back up here. I was beginning to think you'd wised up and retreated while you still had your life."  
Cyber Moon fumed as she altered her thrust and hovered lower to the ground, looking up at the platinum-haired woman. "You bit me! You won't get away with that!"  
"I'm sure," Kimiko deadpanned. "Have you anything left to throw at me besides threats, or do I-"  
_Ker-chak!_ Cyber Moon's forearms split apart as she pointed both of them toward the nosferatu, and a bright yellow glow started to encompass them.  
"Do I... have to... uhm..." Kimiko backed away through the air a bit as she watched the air ripple around the girl's arms. 'Wow. That looks like a LOT of power...'  
In Usagi's eyes, a pair of green targeting reticules appeared over Kimiko's body, and they both turned red as she raised her arms slightly to aim them at the midian's head.  
_SCCRRREEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAAAH!!_ Kimiko jolted to the side as a massive yellow beam split the sky, and was immediately blasted into the side of a building from the beam backwash alone as the entire street was briefly illuminated.  
Usagi's boosters flared briefly to keep her stable in the air, and she flinched as a burst of sparks came from her neck and spilled over her breasts. "So, she's dead now, right?"  
+Negative. Enemy unit is undamaged.+  
"What? I missed? Dang!" Usagi scowled and then scanned the surrounding buildings, spotting the vampiress pushing off from a wall and looking far more wary than before. "Okay, let's try this again..."  
She aimed her arms over at the nosferatu.  
_Pssssssssssht!_ Instead of the energy rods in her forearm charging with energy, this time vents opened all along her torso and blasted out steam.  
"What? What's wrong? Why aren't I shooting again?"  
+Coolant systems functioning at 76 due to internal damage. Firing disruptor cannons would risk core overheat and excessive energy drain.+ She blinked, then reasoned that it DID feel awfully warm after she fired the diruptors; she'd just never thought about "overheating" before.  
Cyber Moon gulped as she saw her opponent suddenly fly toward her, and activated her own boosters to gain distance. 'Great! Now what am I supposed to do?'  
+Unit Cyber Moon still possesses high-yield antimatter munitions capable of complete enemy termination.+  
She briefly recalled the clumsy, if powerful weapon she had fired earlier in the lab. 'If I can't hit her with a beam, how am I supposed to hit her with that? And if I miss I could cause some serious damage!'  
+This unit is not configured to provide precise tactical solutions.+  
Cyber Moon growled as she dodged a few fireballs that Kimiko tossed at her; apparently her computer was willing to analyze the enemy and tell her about her weapons, but wouldn't go much further.  
"Fine! I'll just find..." she trailed off as she noticed that the vampire had frozen in midair, staring forward blankly. "Whoa. What's with her, all of a sudden?"

Kimiko gaped as her mental link with Shio was terminated. 'They did it. They killed Shio. By the dark moon... how on Earth...' She shook her head slowly, reminding herself that she was in the middle of her own battle, and that her enemy had some SERIOUS firepower if she was to be caught unawares.  
Though she had suggested that the operation against the DAPC was a suicide mission, she'd never seriously considered that the department could hold out against elder vampires; hell, she had arranged the personnel for this mission and given the orders with the expectation that the twenty-five YOUNG vampires would have been more than enough to handle a police staff of less than ten.  
Another psychic link was severed; one of the young ones. There was only Yamato and the one survivor left.  
'How did this happen?' She thought as the cyborg released another barrage of mini-missiles at her. 'What are these people?' Her mantle twisted into a lance once more and then lashed out rapidly, stabbing through each incoming warhead and detonating it before got close enough to catch her in the blast.  
Suddenly, a third psychic link was severed, and she froze, stunned.  
_Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!_  
Cyber Moon blinked as the last wave of missiles hit unerringly; the nosferatu had simply frozen in place as if she'd forgotten where she was.  
'Well? Can I fire the big guns again?'  
+Negative. Cooldown safeties will be released in approximately 18 seconds.+  
"Heh. Heh heh heh..."  
Cyber Moon's brow furrowed as the smoke parted around the vampiress. Was she chuckling? About what?  
"Who would have thought... weakling humans indeed..." Her eyes no longer glowed fiercely, but instead looked tired and pained, and she glanced over at the blonde cyborg with regret evident in her features. "What am I doing? What is this all for? So many lives lost... to make a point? To remove a threat? Or to feed some bastard's ego?"  
Usagi had no idea what the undead woman was yammering about, but gladly let her speak as her internal timer counted down to eight seconds.  
Kimiko's eyes narrowed. "It doesn't really matter. I'm just a slave. But I can't return empty-handed." Blue flames surrounded the midian's hand. "You'll have to be my prize! I'll take your head!"  
"Or not," said a new voice from below. "Mars flame sniper!"  
"Uwaaah!" Kimiko screeched as an arrow of fire slammed into her from below, and then whirled around to see who was interfering now. "What the blazes? Who in the nine hells are you people?"  
"They're with me," Cyber Moon said, leveling her arms at the vampiress again as the cooldown timer approached zero.  
"Venus love me chain!"  
"Sparkling wide pressure!"  
Kimiko's mantle whipped out in front of her, shattering the incoming chain of hearts and blocking the lightning sphere that followed it.  
"Enough of this," the platinum-haired nosferatu said gently, her voice barely reaching the Senshi on the street. "It's no use. I've lost."  
_VweeeeeooooooOOOOO..._ Yellow light gathered around Cyber Moon's arms as she summoned her targeting reticules once more. "You bet you've lost! But you're not getting away!"  
Kimiko just snorted, though it certainly lacked any of the arrogance she had displayed before. She had been utterly humiliated, and it showed. "Foolish girl. I've little doubt we'll meet again. Hopefully it won't be as warriors, though."  
Without another word, her body suddenly burst apart into a swarm of dozens of bats, and the veritable cloud of winged rodents fluttered away into a nearby alley before spilling out into the night sky.

"Augh! Damn!" Cyber Moon cursed as her reticules went haywire, unable to focus her weapon on the bat swarm to any useful effect. Frowning, she turned around in the air and softly nudged her boosters forward while decreasing the power to allow for a nice, gentle descent.  
_Clang!_ "Ow!" _Whump!_ "Oof!"  
The inner Senshi all sweatdropped as their leader flew right into a streetlight, banging her head before it sent her tumbling painfully to the streets.  
"Geez, are you okay?" Jupiter asked. Then she gasped. "Whoa, what happened to your neck?" The repair drones were both working rapidly on the large wound, and the sound of their soldering torches created a constant cacophony of hissing and crackling noise.  
"Crazy vampire lady bit me," Cyber Moon mumbled as she got to her feet.  
"Sorry we took so long; Luna didn't want to come - and we didn't really want to bring her - but absolutely INSISTED that she be filled in on what was going on," Mars explained, glancing around the street for any signs of more enemies.  
"That's fine!" Usagi said, breaking out into a run. "We have to get back to the headquarters, quick!"  
"Right!" Her companions said, rushing after her and steeling themselves for battle.

It was an extremely short run with all the Senshi sprinting at top speed, and the non-cyborg Senshi gasped as they saw the state of the building.  
"Look at this place! It's terrible!" Venus exclaimed.  
Mercury nodded sadly. "It looks as if they blasted the whole eastern wall out of the fourth floor; they must have been intending to level the entire building."  
"Uh... yeah... those vampires sure are nasty," Usagi said nervously, her face flushing slightly. "Let's go!"  
Rushing forward, the cyborg grabbed ahold of the front doors and then swung them wide open, her companions stepping up behind her.  
"Halt, evil abominations! The Sailor Senshi are... here... to... uh..."  
Kyle glanced over the top of the manga he was reading. "Hi Tsukino-kun. Good to see you're okay." Then he turned back to his manga. "Heh heh. Oh Negi, when you're not kicking ass you're stealing hearts. Gotta love that kid."  
Usagi glanced from one end of the main lobby to the other. On one end, Asuka was talking to Ranma, who had both his arms and one leg all bandaged up. On the other end, Junko and Tiro were laying on the sofa, looking exhausted while Hunter slumbered at their feet, looking badly scorched but obviously alive. All the officers had noticed the Senshi's entry, but apparently only Kyle found their appearance more important than whatever they were currently doing.  
Sailor Mars stepped forward. "Hey, is everyone okay? We're here to take care of those vampires!"  
"Perfect! We could use someone to do a final sweep!" Snake said suddenly, startling the girls as he emerged from the side. "Here!"  
The Senshi expressed great confusion as the American approached them with an armful of brooms and dustpans, handing one of each to all the Sailors save Usagi.  
"What are these for?" Jupiter asked in confusion.  
"The final sweep," Snake repeated, pointing to the floor in front of Tiro and Junko. "Start on this floor and move up to the second, and then the fourth and clear up all this vampire dust, would you?"  
"You CAN'T be serious," Mars deadpanned.  
Snake just shrugged. "It's either that or mop-up. There's an awful lot of blood on the walls." Then he smiled as he saluted. "Know that we protectors of the peace appreciate your contributions, citizens!"  
Sailor Venus saluted right back, much to her friends' growing distress. "Yes sir! Anything to help, sir!"  
"Fabulous," he responded. Then he took Usagi by the arm. "Well, we've got studying to do. We'll see you suckers later."  
Mercury's eyes boggled. "You're studying HERE?"  
Jupiter's eyes twitched. "After a vampire raid?"  
Mars' eyes narrowed. "While we clean the place up?"  
Snake shrugged. "Well, she DID help out in the actual battle. It's the least we can do." Then he patted Usagi's stomach, much to her embarrassment. "Besides, I'm thirsty. Let's go, Blondie."  
Usagi gave an embarrassed chuckled and quickly followed after Snake, silently thankful that she had gotten out of cleanup duty.  
"What a gyp," Mars mumbled, staring down at her broom. "There's no way I'm-Gah!" She lurched forward suddenly as Venus jabbed her in the back with the handle of her broom.  
"Hey! Get to work! We offered to help, didn't we?" The blonde Senshi asked, frowning. "So instead of having to kill powerful, bloodsucking monsters, instead we just clean up some dust. It's not a bad deal, right?"  
"But... I mean... come on, you can't be serious!" Mars protested, her face flushing.  
It flushed even darker when she saw Mercury shuffle by timidly, pushing along a small pile of dust that presumably used to be an undead being. A few meters away, Makoto was pushing her own broom along straight toward Ranma, apparently deciding to make the most of a bad situation.  
"You guys suck," the fire Senshi mumbled, taking her broom and starting for the corner.

Vampires annihilated: 27  
Zombies squashed: 5  
Annoying neighbors silenced (temporarily, of course): 1  
Rooms blown up: 4

End Chapter 6 


	7. Bloody Dawn

"Anyone who truly wants to go to war has never truly been there before!"  
- Larry Reeves

"Or maybe they aren't truly some kind of sissy."  
- Ken "Snake" Yakata

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **techniques or emphasis**, 'thoughts', (side comments)+writing, computer readouts+

Millennium  
Chapter 7  
Bloody Dawn

Igov took a deep breath of the early morning air as he stepped out of Kotomaro plant's small industrial garage, having completed his check of the alien combat drone that he had stolen. Well, stolen again.  
The device looked promising, but modifications were clearly in order. Its tactical applications were sharply limited so long as it had to be tethered to an immobile power supply, and according to what data could be harvested from its nearly incomprehensible cybertronic core, it was an obvious and severe weakness as well.  
Igov wasn't really surprised. For all Yoshi Konta's scientific genius, he did not concern himself overmuch with the particulars of combat, just the potentials of the technology.  
The Russian nodded to a pair of interior guards - terrorists, of course - as he fished his cigarettes out of his coat pocket. The men turned a corner as he lit up, and he turned his gaze back toward the skyline as the first hints of sunlight began to creep around the buildings and into the streets.  
Igov sighed, and a thick cloud of smoke poured from the corner of his lips. Apparently his superiors among the Freedom's Angels were mollified by his recent successes; his early career with the terrorists had been marked by a notable string of crushing defeats (and a trail of burning, twisted metal), which had consumed a great deal of resources and severely damaged his reputation as a worthwhile commander among the Angels. Apparently the recovery of the alien technology had turned much of that around.  
His recovery of the drone had been noted, but as the objective was just to recover a weapon that had been accidentally lost to the enemy, it wasn't given nearly as much attention. Which was quite fortunate, as he then had no reason to reveal that he had been beaten by a DAPC officer because he had stopped to fight a group of idiot girls in ice skating uniforms.

"GYAH!"  
Igov whirled around as a shout of surprise came from around the corner of the garage, and his combat scanners activated.  
His eyes narrowed as he stalked over to the corner of the building, his footfalls pounding the concrete and ensuring that whoever was hiding in the early morning shadows knew another challenger was arriving.  
Igov considered it the height of arrogance that the enemy hadn't heeded such gracious forewarning; there in the dark space between the garage and a tall fence separating the facility from the next property, a teenage girl was biting deeply into the neck of a dead guard, blood spilling from the corner of her mouth and dripping off her cheek. The other man lay dead on the ground further down the alley, blood streaked across the wall of the garage and his rifle at his feet.  
The cyborg general took a deep drag off his cigarette as he stared at the scene stonily. Those two had been relatively good guards; in a terrorist organization, guards who didn't goof off on their shift or push around anybody who didn't have a gun of their own were rare and valuable, after all. They were not poorly trained either, but no doubt had been caught completely by surprise. Who could have guessed that a young girl would be any kind of threat? He shook his head sadly. Such a waste.  
The vampiress frowned as she let her meal fall to the ground, and idly wiped the blood from her mouth as she eyed the newcomer warily. She was used to more... shock and terror when somebody stumbled upon a scene of a girl chewing on a man's jugular. Then again, this fellow was worth a few stares on his own; was that really a cybernetic eye?  
Nonetheless, she darted forward for the attack. Her other kill was still fresh and full of precious life fluid (other than that which had been splattered all over the wall, anyway), and she didn't want anybody sounding an alarm.  
Igov puffed out a bit of smoke as she approached.  
_Thwack!_ Next thing the young vampiress knew, she was skidding across the concrete, her cheekbone and jaw smashed into so many little splinters within her mouth.  
Igov took another puff, letting his arm fall back to his side. Then he silently walked forward as the midian rolled to a stop some seven meters away.  
The vampire girl laid on the ground stunned for a moment, then scrambled to her feet, her eyes tearing as blood, saliva, and bits of bone dribbled from her mouth. She didn't fully understand what had just happened, but she knew that she had somehow stumbled onto an opponent she was completely unprepared for at a time when she was mere minutes away from losing what little power she commanded. Pushing the rapidly numbing pain to the back of her mind, she jumped up over the wall separating the two adjacent facilities and broke out into a run.

Igov stopped in his tracks, and took a few more puffs on his cigarette. Then he tapped the cybernetic peripheral on his ear and waited.  
Forty seconds later, the sound of light footsteps on metal filled the early morning air, and Igov snapped his head to the side as a shapely raven-haired android fell down onto the ground, landing in a crouch.  
"Target has escaped to east, moving on foot. Wounded. Uploading visual data," Igov said, tapping the peripheral on his head again as the Mk. III android nodded its head in understanding.  
The cybernetic girl's eyes fixated on the ground, and they narrowed at the blood trail being left by its new target.  
Having received her target's visual profile and located a simple means of tracking her, the android leapt up onto the wall and then further up onto the wall of the next building to carry out its mission.

Igov took a final, long drag on his cigarette before plucking it from his lips and flicking it onto the ground.  
Then he tapped his optical unit again, waiting patiently as he heard a dial tone followed by the sound of a familiar number being dialed.  
_Click! Hello?_  
"Ah, Tokima-san! Good morning! Is Igov."  
_Good morning to you too, I suppose... what's this about? Can it wait? You know this number isn't perfectly secure._  
"Igov make it quick, then. Has been numerous killings in hideouts and base recently, yes? Igov has just found most likely cause. It would seem there be parasites in Tokyo."  
_Parasites? Hmmm... I'll meet with you as soon as possible. Give me half an hour._  
"Indeed. Igov will have battle plan drafted by then to eliminate this new threat," the Russian said, his grim expression splitting ever so slightly into a grin. "Igov out." After a brief burst of static, the line was cut.

The Russian was about to go back into the plant, when he stopped and stared at the two corpses.  
Walking back to the one that the girl had been draining, he picked up the corpse by the arm and inspected the damage.  
"Hm. Shredded jugular and blood loss. These ones still good for conversion."  
Smiling slightly to himself, the cyborg walked over and grabbed the second body by the leg, and then dragged both bodies behind him as he walked into the rear section of the plant. No reason to waste a perfectly good cadaver, after all.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A gentle mechanical hum filled the room as the examination table tilted backward so that its occupant was lying flat on her back.  
_WhrrrrrrGHNNNNGK!_  
A terrible grinding noise came from the mechanism responsible for the shift as it jammed, having received too much damage the night previous to complete its simple task.  
Seras sighed as the device shut off with a brief spray of sparks, and glanced at Usagi, who lay strapped to the surface of the machine. "Well, that tears it; every damn one of the tables is broken, now. How did you two end up destroying the entire lab, again?"  
Usagi bigsweated as she smiled nervously. "Well, uh... it all happened so fast, you see... and there may have been a gas leak, maybe..."  
Across the room, Ranma stood at attention next to Ami and Rei.  
"Can you actually fix the damage to her neck?" Ami asked timidly. "From what I've gathered, her automated repair systems have done all they can, but the damage is extensive enough that to fully repair it they'd need special materials."  
Seras sighed wearily. "I'll be honest; I seriously doubt it. I'm a doctor, not a cybernetics expert."  
"Yes you are," Ranma said immediately.  
The drunk blinked. "I'm what? A doctor?"  
"No, you're a cybernetics expert," Ranma clarified, arms crossed over his chest.  
Seras looked stunned by the statement, which caused Ami and Rei to sweatdrop. "I am? Since when?"  
"Since six o'clock this morning when I said you couldn't have any more beer until you fixed Usagi-chan!" Ranma scowled. "Now stop complaining and get to work! You can have this when you finish!" He held out a bottle of Tequila and shook it for emphasis.  
Seras immediately brightened and started rummaging through a suitcase next to him packed with his spare tools.  
"Putting aside the fact that your 'doctor' is a drunken idiot," Rei began dryly, "is this place really the best room to be fixing her in?"  
To accentuate her point, the raven-haired girl pointed to the gaping hole in the wall and the vast stretch of scorched ground and the twisted, melted metal that stuck out of it awkwardly.  
Ranma shrugged helplessly. "Well, the only other labs we have are in the sub-levels, but those are still in lockdown. The captain wants to get the rest of the HQ mostly squared away and make sure we're ready for another attack before we check downstairs."  
Rei raised an eyebrow. "Why?"  
"On the off-chance that one of the bloodsuckers got down there and started messing around; we have stuff locked up down there that would be pretty difficult to stop if it got free, including one of their fellow vampires."  
_FSSSSHT!_ All other conversation stopped for a moment as Seras held the acetylene torch to the patch of foam in Usagi's neck, much to the blonde's obvious discomfort.  
"Are we SURE he knows what he's doing?" Rei asked suspiciously of Ranma.  
"We try not to ask those sorts of questions around here," the pigtailed man responded evasively. "We might not like the answer."  
Seras put the torch to the side, then took out a sharp-looking metal scraper and proceeded to dig the remaining foam solution out of the wound.  
Rei watched for a moment, then turned back to Ranma. "So how are you guys holding up after the attack? A bit shaken from being nearly killed?"  
Before Ranma could answer, Snake poked his head in through what used to be the wall separating the lab from the maintenance closet. "Hey Ranma! I'm ordering new business cards! What sounds better to you, 'Vampire slayer' or 'Bane of the walking dead'?"  
Ignoring Rei's facefault, Ranma considered the question. "Go with bane. 'Vampire slayer' is kind of played out, you know?"  
"Ah, good point. Thanks!" Snake turned his head and shouted down the hall as he left. "Hey, Kyle! You can have 'Vampire slayer' after all!"

Ranma turned back to Rei, who was just standing up. "I'm sorry, what was your question again?"  
"Never mind," the raven-haired girl mumbled. "So what are you going to do now? Besides making sure all your officers have that weird garlic spray stuff, I mean?"  
"We're going to hunt them down, obviously," Ranma said, his face turning unnaturally grim. "They gave it their best shot, and they lost. Now we're going to take the fight to them."  
"Okay... so where's that?" The raven-haired girl asked.  
Ranma held his serious expression for a few more moments before he deflated. "I have no idea," he admitted. "We probably should have left one of the attackers alive... er, undead. Whatever."  
_PSSSSSSHT!_ Usagi's eyes went wide as she felt some kind of pressurized fluid burst out of her neck. "Hey! Hey! What are you doing? Is it supposed to do that?!" She wanted to crane her neck and try to look at the wound, but was afraid that she would only make the problem - if there was one - even worse.  
"Don't worry about it!" Seras chided as he positioned himself around the jet to try and seal it. "I'm the cybernetics expert, right?"  
"That doesn't sound like a rhetorical question," Rei deadpanned.  
To Seras' credit, he managed to seal the breach in short order, and Usagi gulped as he took a length of wire and some forceps before turning the torch on her neck once more.  
"What about you? What are you going to do?" Ranma asked.  
Rei immediately lowered her voice so that Seras couldn't hear her over the sound of his work. "We're going ahead with the attack plan on the terrorists for now. But Ami thinks that if she could get a hold of one of the vampires and do a good scan on one that she might be able to find some kind of energy signature to lock on to. With that, we could track the vampires to wherever they're hiding." She hesitated for a moment. "Though if that doesn't work out, I have another source."  
"Really? What kind of source?" Ranma asked. Much to Rei's annoyance, he wasn't being nearly as careful about keeping his voice down.  
"A **secret** source," Rei snapped. "I can't tell you who it is, or that person might get in trouble."  
Left unsaid was that Ranma and company would probably be the ones causing the trouble for her source if she revealed it; Rei didn't know if accidentally blowing a cop's cover while he was on a mission was actually against the law, but she didn't doubt that these cops in particular had ways of exacting retribution regardless.  
"You said you had a captured vampire, right?"  
Ranma shrugged. "Yeah, but he's down in the lockdown area. Come back tomorrow and we might be able to help you out."  
Rei frowned, and glanced briefly at Seras again before she spoke. "If you're busy, couldn't the Senshi drop down there and check it out for you?"  
The pigtailed officer sweatdropped. "Ah... thanks, but if something DID get loose, the last thing we want is someone firing high-yield missiles and huge magical blasts down there, you know? Something else might get loose."  
The fire Senshi groaned, but relented. "Fine, fine, whatever. You just do your thing and try not to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it."  
_GZZT!_ "Ha! Done!"  
Rei and Ranma both blinked in surprise before turning their attention toward Seras, who was looking down at Usagi in satisfaction.  
While the cyborg's neck wasn't completely repaired - the skin and dermal armor was still missing, leaving the interior components exposed - the wound that had been a mess of twisted metal and torn wires was now an orderly-looking collection of tubes and metal rods.  
"That... That was fast..." Rei mumbled doubtfully.  
"Usagi-chan? You okay?" Ranma asked.  
Usagi blinked, and her eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment.  
+Testing system repair...+  
+Respiratory and circulatory systems running at 98.47 percent. Calibrating systems... Function restored to 100 percent. Restoring dermal layer.+  
_Vwrrr!_ The two repair drones scrambled out of Usagi's shoulders and clung to her neck, releasing a thin film over the exposed components that slowly seemed to solidify into a solid covering.  
"Oh, good!" Usagi breathed a sigh of relief as Seras deactivated the table restraints, allowing her to sit up. "It looks like I'm okay now!"  
"Wow... the drunk actually did it," Rei muttered in disbelief.  
Seras cleared his throat, and looked at Ranma expectantly.  
Ranma reached toward the counter behind him. "Yeah, yeah. Here you... huh?" Holding up the bottle to the cybernetics genius, Ranma blinked as he realized the bottle was now empty. "What the hell? What happened? Did it break?" He grew increasingly confused as he failed to find any evidence of a breach in the bottle.  
Rei frowned. "Where's Ami?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The genius Senshi was, at the time of Rei's question, making her way down the stairs to the second floor, and having considerable difficulty in doing so without tripping and severely injuring herself.  
'Probably shouldn't have drunk the whole bottle...' she thought to herself as her grip tightened on the hand rail, the room around her momentarily spinning.  
After waiting for her surroundings to get themselves back in order, Ami slowly lowered herself down another step.  
"Easy there, cousin."  
Ami would have recoiled in surprise and fallen down backwards were it not for Asuka taking her arm and holding her steady. "Wh-Wha? Where'd you come from?"  
Asuka sweatdropped. "I was walking straight down the hall. I was right in front of you." Then her nose wrinkled, and then her eyes narrowed. "Are you drunk?"  
"Jus' a little," Ami insisted drearily, letting her body slump forward onto her cousin.  
Asuka rolled her eyes and lifted the girl up and down to the bottom of the stairs. Although Ami was actually slightly taller than her older cousin, she was a slim little thing, and the police captain possessed considerable muscle.  
"Look, I'm glad I ran into you. Can I speak to you alone?" Asuka asked, not waiting for an answer before gently pulling Ami into one of the side rooms.  
"Ah? Shure," Ami slurred, the alcohol settling further into her system as she was guided through the doorway.  
Asuka sat Ami down in the single chair next to the long table in the room, and briefly stopped to wonder what exactly this room was for besides a convenient place to hold a private conversation. It possessed only a table, a large cabinet, and a few chairs, most of which had been stacked up in a corner. Rows of broadband outlets near the back of the room made Asuka guess that it was intended to be some sort of computer room that had never been supplied with actual computers; the DAPC had several redundant rooms due to its pitifully small staff, as well as the limited talents of the staff they had. When it came to computer skills, Tiro was considered the most adept in the department, and only because he needed to hide his vast internet pornography collection from her on the HQ's servers.  
"Listen, Ami-chan, I wanted to talk to you about this whole Sailor Mercury bit you have going on," Asuka begin.  
"Wha? I'm nah Shailor Mercury," Ami insisted drowsily.  
"Yes you are," Asuka said firmly. "I have your registration file in our records, and combined with that, it's too convenient that you'd simply happen to be friends with Miss Borg up there, who's already admitted to being Sailor Moon, without being involved in that Senshi lunacy at all."  
Ami flushed and looked away. "She has SOME non-Senshi friends," the bluette mumbled.  
"Regardless, I assume your family doesn't know about this?" Asuka guessed, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared down at her cousin.  
"Nope. Why? That a problem?"  
Asuka sighed and rubbed her head. "Well, I suppose not. If I kept in touch with aunt Chisato I'd feel obligated to tell her, but as I haven't seen her in so long, it's hardly my place to get involved." She frowned. "So, how did this come about, anyway? I take it you don't spend a few years in magic school and then get assigned a miniskirt by a governing body. What happens that turns people into 'magical girls'?"  
"Ahhh..." Ami flushed for a moment as she thought it over, the red tinge over her face growing more pronounced. "Well, it just sort of... happens."  
Asuka groaned. "Ami-chan, I know how smart you are. You can offer a better explanation than that, even if you ARE blitzed out of your skull."  
The younger girl blinked and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, as if trying to consciously summon her mental faculties to her. "Ah... right. Well... it involves an alien kingdom which existed long before recorded history. Long story short, it fell to a bunch of monsters, and sent its power into the reincarnated souls of its royal families, and I'm one of them."  
"So... you have the reincarnated soul of some warrior from a long-dead civilization?" Asuka asked.  
"Yup."  
"That's it? And did you wake up one morning and find out that you had magic skirt powers?"  
"No, a talking animal told me."  
Asuka rubbed her forehead as she tried to wrap her mind around all this. "Okay. So... a talking animal comes up to you, tells you about all this, and then you turn into a magical girl and start fighting to save the world and whatnot?"  
Ami nodded hesitantly. "Yeah. There's a lot of drama and time travel involved too, but that's the gist of it."  
"I see..." The police captain rubbed her chin thoughtfully for a moment. "So, is there a catch to this? I mean, is it common for long-dead civilizations to simply send magic envoys forward and hand out magic wands?"  
"Well... we ARE tasked with saving the world, and far too often, seem to be the only ones capable of doing so. Also, enemies tend to target us specifically, which is kind of a downside."  
"Okay, fine... but... why do it?" Asuka asked, still troubled by the situation. "Why send these powers forward, however the hell they did it? Couldn't they have used that power to try and save themselves?"  
"I dunno," Ami said simply.  
Of course, she DID know, or at least had several very likely theories, but explaining that would involve several detailed explanations of the Senshis' past experiences, future goals, and secret weapons, including her very own thesis on time travel and its various mechanics.  
Which she probably shouldn't blurt to someone who had stumbled upon her identity by accident, and whose loyalty belonged to the federal government. Besides, she was too sloshed.  
"Ugh." Asuka leaned on the table and massaged her head. "Ami-chan, I know you've been doing this for a while, and I don't know what you've been through, but... you don't seem like much of a fighter to me."  
"Well... I'm NOT much a fighter, really," the ice Senshi admitted. "You have to understand; the engagements we fight are very different from the ones you do. Our magical powers are the only things that stand between us and annihilation. We don't have weapons, or training, and we usually know very little about our enemy."  
"Hmmm..." Asuka tapped her lip thoughtfully. "And I assume, of course, that for some stupid reason, you can't hand your powers off to someone more suited, or anything like that. This 'reincarnation' business doesn't seem that convenient."  
"No, I suppose not," Ami admitted uncomfortably.  
"Well, I suppose that will do for now," Asuka said, standing up. "I wanted to talk to you to get a better feel for just what you were doing and how you might handle it."  
Ami looked doubtful. "And... what do you think?"  
"Honestly, I think that I should find someone else to join Ranma as part of your guard to keep you all from getting killed," Asuka said bluntly, causing Ami to wince, "but that's impossible, of course. I don't really have anyone to send that wouldn't cause more problems than they'd prevent, and we're shorthanded enough." Then she smirked slightly. "Besides. You've survived this long on instinct, luck, and your silly powers, so there must be SOMETHING to it all." She winked. "But seriously though; if you guys get into a bind, give us a ring, all right?"  
Ami sighed and stood up. After stumbling and nearly failing in that task, Asuka took her cousins hand.  
"Good grief, woman, just what did you DRINK?"  
"'S 'is own fault fer not keepin' an eye on dah bottle... ooh, my head..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Igov... what are you doing?" Alexandra asked with a raised eyebrow at the scene before her.  
Behind the voluptuous woman, Bei winced at the sight that greeted them; Igov was observing a ghoul closely as he held it around the neck, as if he hadn't seen such a creature before. The ghoul, in turn, was struggling mightily to bite and claw at the Russian's arm with very little success.  
The cyborg cocked his head to the side, then glanced at the newly arrived woman. "This... is most odd."  
"This is not a secure area, Igov," Alex chided. "A T-virus outbreak here could be extremely dangerous. Destroy that thing, please."  
"Is not T-virus," Igov said simply, holding the ghoul up and staring at the wound on its neck as the creature kicked its feet weakly. "All scans negative. This man was not killed by virus carrier."  
Alexandra blinked, appropriately stunned. "What? Then... what IS that thing?"  
"Igov is not sure," the Russian admitted. "Igov call Tokima-san here because Igov see girl what kill two men. Was taking corpses back for conversion to cyborg when this one start moving again."  
Alex frowned. "A girl, you say? Not a creep or a zombie?"  
"Definitely not zombie. Girl move fast, and with obvious intelligence. She have fangs, and drain blood from this one's neck."  
Bei and Alex both blinked.  
"Wait... you're saying... we have VAMPIRES?" Bei asked incredulously.  
"It would seem so. Or there is other biological weapon in Angels' labs that Igov knows nothing about."  
"Hmmm... there are, but nothing like this..." she frowned uncertainly. Vampires? The idea sounded ridiculous, but she was the commander of a force of nightmarish mutants and cybernetically enhanced undead. Who was she to dismiss vampires as a possible cause of isolated dens of people in hiding vanishing without a trace?  
"So. What do you plan to do about this?" The brunette asked, crossing her arms under her ample breasts as she stared at the Russian.  
Igov smiled, and gently put greater pressure on the neck in his grip.  
_Krick... Crack!_  
Bei winced as the ghoul's head tumbled onto the floor, rolling past her foot. Doubtless Alexandra noticed as well, but her expression betrayed nothing.  
"What shall I do beside my duty? Igov will see to complete elimination of threat, of course," he said firmly, dropping the limp torso on the ground and kicking it to the side as one would a piece of garbage. "If dead would come back to trouble living, Igov must insist they do so under his command. Is quite troublesome otherwise." He hesitated. "Then there is fact that these dead feed on our living. This will not stand."  
"Are you sure we can afford to fight another opponent? Our strength is waning badly enough as it is," she mumbled, rubbing her chin.  
"Igov is sure we cannot afford to ignore this new threat," he said gruffly, his eyes narrowing. "If these creatures truly are... willful undead, they'd best be destroyed now. Our cause gains nothing from their predations."  
"Still... I'd really like to leave the defense of the city to the city's actual defenders," Alex groused. "That we should waste our own resources when our enemies could be getting themselves killed..."  
"That would certainly be option... were it not that our own soldiers are at risk," Igov said, shrugging.  
Alex frowned, then sighed. "Very well. Do what you have to do. But see if you can bring back a few of these creatures alive... or at least as alive as they get."  
"It is as you say," the Russian said stonily. "Igov make preparations. By your leave."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sailor Saturn grimaced slightly as she turned over in her sleep, her forehead creasing gently.  
"Oh Saturn-chan? Are you ready to wake up? Hotaru?"  
She twitched for a moment, and her eyes slowly crept open and consciousness came to her.  
"Wha... What? What is... where am I?" The princess of Saturn mumbled, not getting up as her head turned to take in her surroundings.  
She was laying on a long cushion in the middle of an exquisite, if not terribly dusty library, and as she rubbed her eyes and sat up, she realized quickly that she had no clue how she got there.  
"Ah, good. You're awake. Are you well?"  
Saturn turned toward the voice and blinked. She should have been surprised at seeing a semi-transparent man stooping over her when she woke up whether or not she remembered the spectre from her arrival. But... for some reason, she didn't find his presence disconcerting or out of place at all.  
"Oh, hello Nal'Shek," the violet-haired girl mumbled before yawning.  
"Are you all right? You seemed... confused."  
Saturn looked up at the spirit, confusion indeed evident on her face. "Well, it's just..." she stopped and looked around. "Where am I, exactly? Why did I fall asleep here? It's kind of hazy..."  
"Ah, yes. Well, I think that's hardly important right this moment, don't you think?"  
Sailor Saturn was about to ask what Nal'Shek meant by that, when her rumbling stomach revealed something very important to her: she was absolutely famished. And dreadfully thirsty, too. In fact, it was as if she hadn't eaten or drunk anything in days.  
"Oh. Uh... do you have anything to eat?" she asked timidly, her cheeks flushing.  
Nal'Shek regarded the girl with a kind smile. "Of course. Right this way, my dear." Floating to the side, he gestured past him toward the door, and Sailor Saturn hopped up off of the cushion, thoughts of nourishment banishing all thought of her strange confusion upon awaking, and the haze that had overtaken her recent memories.  
Still, she DID remember Nal'Shek, and that he was trying to help her with... something... so that was good enough, right?  
"It should be in here..." Nal'Shek floated toward a dusty old door after guiding Saturn through the hallway, and then held a hand toward it. "I haven't had any need for sustenance in quite some time, so the machines have been in disuse, but the technology is extremely reliable. My supplies should still be edible, and the water filter should have survived even after all this time..."  
The door shook for a moment as lights to the side of the barrier lit up, and slowly the door creaked upward, a light shower of dirt and dust falling onto the floor.  
Saturn didn't even wait for the door to finish opening before she ducked through the doorway, idly brushing the falling dust out of her hair as she scanned the interior of the room for any sign of food. In one corner of the room were several large crates, while along one wall was an old, rusted-out machine with a clear plastic pipe full of water next to it.  
Not immediately seeing any food, she went for the machine, pushing the biggest button she could find in her haste to get something in her mouth. At once the sound of grinding machinery filled her ears, and a thin stream of water started spilling out a spout near the button she had pressed.  
Without a thought for decorum, she lowered her mouth to the spout and greedily sucked up the water as fast as she could.  
Nal'Shek smirked at the sight. "Within those crates you'll find sealed packages of rations. It's nothing tasty, but they last long enough to have remained edible after all these centuries, and they're excellently fortified in terms of nutrition."  
Saturn gulped down another mouthful of water, then practically leapt at the crates; she didn't care if the food was several MILLENNIA old and rotting as a result at this point. She had to eat, or she wouldn't be able to stay conscious for much longer. Normally she didn't eat much, and what few friends she had tended to comment on her eating habits with great concern; with so little body fat to fall back on in times of starvation, she was on the verge of collapse.

The spectre waited patiently as the purple-haired girl gorged herself, stuffing down ration trays full of unidentifiable, hardened substances and then tossing the packaging haphazardly into the empty crate before attacking the next package. Every once in a while she would start coughing violently, and then quickly scramble over to the purifier to gulp down more water. Nal'Shek really couldn't decide if the scene was delightful or pathetic.  
When Saturn had filled up, it happened all at once; in the midst of ripping open another package of rations, she suddenly grimaced and rolled backward onto the floor, heaving a sigh that seemed half-way between contentment and misery.  
"Well, it would seem you've eaten your fill. Normally I'd suggest you rest after eating so much, but you've rested quite enough."  
"Oh. Well..." Saturn looked around for a moment, clearly confused. "Now what? Uh... shouldn't I get going?"  
Nal'Shek smiled again. "You wouldn't want to leave before your training even begins, would you?"  
"I... wait... training?" Sailor Saturn rubbed her head for a moment.  
"Yes, of course. Your training in the ways of the Force." The spectre smiled. "You wouldn't want to leave now, would you?"  
"I..." The Senshi of destruction hesitated. She knew... somewhere, in the back of her mind, that she had... SOMETHING else she was supposed to be doing, or at least that this situation was somehow wrong, but for the life of her she couldn't put any logic to it. The person - using the term loosely - had done nothing but converse with her and feed her, and now she was to be given training... "Okay, I'll stay. I don't see why not."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Usagi-chan, are you SURE you're up for this?" Rei asked anxiously.  
In response, the blonde cyborg simply smiled back at her and gave her a thumbs-up.  
"Don't worry about it. I've got this in the bag."  
Minako blinked. "You've got it in the WHAT? What does that mean?" Her friend briefly rolled their eyes and ignored her.  
"I still wonder how reliable the tutoring you got with the DAPC could actually be," Ami murmured uncomfortably.  
"What, you don't actually think they're as dumb as they act, do you?" Makoto asked.  
"I'm basing my hypothesis entirely on what their commanding officer tells me," the genius Senshi said. "And she insists that the five of her officers put together couldn't complete a crossword puzzle."  
Rei shrugged. "While I pretty much agree they're all idiots, in all fairness Usagi could barely START a crossword puzzle."  
The blonde cyborg twitched. "Hey... I'm right here, you know..."  
Minako stepped forward and patted her on the shoulders. "Don't worry about it. You'll do fine! This is what you spent all that time preparing for! I know you'll pass!"  
Usagi cheered instantly. "Right! This'll be a snap!"  
The other blonde nodded as she stepped back. "Exactly! Snap your neck!"  
Makoto slapped herself in the forehead as Usagi flinched back, her eyes wide.  
"The expression is 'break a leg,' Mina-chan," the brunette mumbled.  
Minako frowned. "Well... that hardly seems much better, really."  
"Usagi-chan, you should probably get to class before we completely demoralize you," Rei deadpanned.  
"Uh, okay, sure." The ponytailed blonde gave a final wave as she dashed toward the double doors to the main hall, ready for the mid-terms that would determine her future at her current school.

'I can't fail... NO! I **won't** fail! Usagi Tsukino will-' _Thud!_ "Ouch!"  
Usagi winced as she fell flat on her face, her foot having caught the edge of one of the steps.  
+Minor impact damage sustained. Total systems down: 0. Kinetic dampeners at 98. Total damage negligible.+  
Usagi rolled her eyes as she stood up. 'Thanks, but I think you can save the damage reports for when I actually get hit by something. I fall down an awful lot.'  
+Understood. Reconfiguring data analysis parameters.+  
'Good. You do... that. Do you have my notes ready?'  
+Affirmative. All data has been stored and categorized according to pre-set specifications. This unit is ready to begin.+  
Usagi smiled and gripped a hand into a fist, which got some attention from the other students that had watched her fall. 'All right! Let's go ace a test!'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ami and Minako glanced at each other uncertainly before staring back through the doorway into their dorm room.  
Usagi was slumped down in the chair at her desk, a veil of gloom hanging over her. A paper was lying on the desk in front of her, face-down, and both of her repair drones were on the desk, staring at her in silence while occasionally glancing at each other.  
"Why are those spider-things out?" Minako whispered.  
"I think her condition might actually be so bad that they mistook her condition for actual damage," Ami whispered back. "... Or maybe they're on watch in case she tries to cut herself?"  
"Usagi-chan wouldn't do that!"  
"Yeah, but they might not know that," Ami mumbled.  
Gathering up her courage, the bluette stepped into the room and slowly approached Usagi, hands clasped behind her back.  
"So..." Ami hesitated as Usagi failed to budge at her voice. "Wanna talk about it?"  
_Vwwrrr!_ Without Usagi actually moving at all, a servo arm emerged from her back and snapped up the piece of paper on her desk.  
The oiled gears of the arm buzzed softly as it swung over in front of Ami, the claw twisting to show her the front of the paper.  
Ami winced. "Okay... so you got an 'F' in history..." She glanced at the desk, where she could see more papers underneath the first one. "And English... and phys ed, too? How did you mess up THAT badly in gym class?"  
She took a step back as a vein popped up on Usagi's head. "Oh! Uh, sorry... but... how?"  
Minako's jaw dropped as she stared at the papers. "How did this happen? You were so confident!"  
Usagi sniffled and slumped backward into her chair. "I don't KNOW! I can't believe this! How could I have failed after I worked so hard?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Three hours previous, in the history professor's office.)

The professor twitched as his eyes scanned down the paragraph of clumsy, if easily legible writing, looking for some sign as to whether this was a joke or not.  
Sadly, he could find no such indications, and his brow furrowed in anger.  
'What the hell is this? Every single answer she gave has something to do with America in it!' The questions that actually WERE about America were all spot on, at least, he had to give her that.  
Well, all except a single question near the end of the test.  
+What is the war atrocity committed by the United States at the end of World War II, and where did it take place?+  
+Due to the threat of enemy attack from the numerous military bases on the Pacific Isles, America launched several assaults to take well-entrenched, strategically unimportant positions. Naturally, America won, but the U.S. forces suffered terrible losses that all could have been avoided if they'd just built those nukes a little faster.+  
Clenching his teeth angrily, the professor reached for his red marker.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Two hours previous, in the English professor's office.)

The professor stared at the gibberish written across the page before her, uncomprehending.  
"I... I just don't get it..." she mumbled, peering closer at the horror of writing as if the problem had anything to do with being nearsighted.  
The test read, in English:  
+Explain your favorite hobby in as much detail as possible; what it is, how often you do it, and why you like it.+  
Below it read, in admittedly flawless English:  
+Ice cream shops I raid+  
+Sweets and snacks so dear to me+  
+I like manga, too+  
"A haiku? ... WHY?"  
Shaking her head, the professor reached for her red marker.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(One hour previous, on the sidelines of the soccer field)

"Good GOD... what the hell is she DOING? What is this?" the teacher's aide asked in equal amounts of awe and horror as he stared out at the field.  
A fairly constant stream of injured boys and girls (the class was mixed for soccer) were being helped off the field due to injuries created, quite deliberately, by a single blonde girl racing across the length of the field.  
It wasn't THAT uncommon for certain players to start taking the game too seriously, or use the activity to work off some aggression, but the player in question was Usagi Tsukino; without question the most lethargic, uncompetitive, and uninspired student this gym teacher had in his class.  
And judging by the way she kept slide-tackling people, including those who weren't anywhere near the ball, it was evident she had gone completely off the deep end.  
In fact, the soccer game itself had come to a complete halt; it was already twelve to nothing for Usagi's team, and the opposition was now simply running away from her in a constant loop around the playing field, completely ignoring the ball and the game that was supposed to be happening. Some of them tried to flee before they were injured, but the blonde would descend on them immediately with inhuman speed, striking them down before they could make it to the safety of the bleachers with a grim and determined expression on her face. Her own team had stopped trying to play, instead choosing to watch in morbid fascination as their worst player massacred their opponents.  
"Coach? Shouldn't you do something?" the aide asked, frowning.  
"Kid, did you see when the ref waved that red flag in her face and told her she was off the field? She actually stood there and argued the rules with him, and then threw him into the bleachers when he tried to force her off!"  
The aide frowned. "Well... yeah. Shouldn't you reprimand her for doing that?"  
"I have a much safer and more permanent way of reprimanding her, kid."  
He took out his red marker, and pressed it against the clipboard. "Tsukino-san... you're done."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"BWAAAAAAAAH!!" Ami and Minako sweatdropped as they were subjected to the painfully familiar sight of their friend and princess descending into a sobbing wreck. "My college education is OVER! I'm going to spend the rest of my life sweeping floors, or flipping burgers, or being a reporter!"  
"Uh... I'm pretty sure you need a degree to be a reporter," Minako said gently.  
Usagi seemed alarmed at the news. "What? Why? They're all idiots!"  
"Well... they're educated idiots," Ami said, shrugging.  
"I can't even make it as a journalist?! WAAAAAAAAAH!!"

Leaving their sobbing leader, Minako and Ami quickly convened on the other side of the room.  
"I don't know... maybe we can do something to change the grade?" Minako suggested.  
Ami's eyes narrowed. "Mina-chan, I'm not going to let this turn into another major scandal like-"  
"For the LAST TIME! I was NOT sleeping with him for better grades, I did it because he was hot and a sympathetic listener!" the blonde hissed.  
"Okay, okay! But what are we supposed to do?" Ami asked tiredly. "If it was just a C instead of a B or a single class instead of three classes, we might be able to talk a professor into raising a grade so that Usagi-chan won't be kicked out of school, but no amount of pity is going to fix three F's."  
"Well... what if we, you know... cheated? Just a little bit?" Minako said carefully.  
A vein popped up on Ami's head. "Mina-chan..."  
"Yeah, I know you're big on the 'hard-working, goody-two-shoes' bit, but hear me out!" Minako insisted. "This is more important than it seems! Usagi's future career isn't the only thing at stake here; we can't be separated at a time like this! She's been turned into a cyborg, and we have vampires swarming all over the city! She needs our help and support more than ever, and we need to stick together more than ever! This is NOT the time for academic turmoil!"  
Ami twitched, and her hands clenched into fists briefly before unclenching. "Maybe..."  
"I mean, this all started because she was kidnapped! What teacher wouldn't accept that as an excuse as missing a stupid math test?" Minako pushed. Of course, by the time the actual test was occurring, Usagi was back and had recovered, but hopefully Ami wouldn't be so sensitive to the details. "But it's not like we can tell them WHY she missed that test!"  
As she could see the shorter girl's moral resolve quickly breaking down, Minako put a hand on her shoulder and went for the killing blow. "We have to do this! Not just for a friend's future, but for the greater good of Japan! Maybe even the world!"  
Ami sighed as the last of her strength to resist faded. "All right, fine. But we need to hurry." She started rubbing her chin. "The professors aren't the ones that handle things like judging whether to remove students based on their GPA, and probably won't submit their grades for another few weeks. If we change Usagi's grade in their books, then they'd notice for sure, but if I can get into the Dean's office and-" she jumped slightly as she felt something needle her arm, and she turned quickly to see one of the repair drones that had jabbed her with a leg.  
"Uh... hello there," she said awkwardly, not having any idea just how intelligent the drones were, or if they could even hear and process speech. "Did... did you want something?"  
The second drone scurried over next to the first across the kitchen counter, dragging a folded piece of paper via what looked like a miniature crane.  
Minako and Ami stared at the pair of spider-like droid, not comprehending.  
Frowning, Ami picked up the piece of paper, expecting it to be ANOTHER class that Usagi had somehow failed, or perhaps a message from the drones themselves since they didn't seem to be able to talk.  
Her eyes bugged out as she read the letter, and she whirled around toward Usagi. "They kicked you out ALREADY? Your last class was less than two hours ago!"  
Usagi flinched.  
Minako's eyes bugged out as well as she read over Ami's shoulder. "You broke some guy's leg?"  
"It was an accident," Usagi mumbled weakly. "And Ranma-kun never said it was against the rules, anyway..."  
"Well... hmmm... okay, yeah. This precludes pretty much anything we could have done to save Usagi's enrollment," Ami deadpanned.  
"You've gotta be kidding me!" Minako gasped. "It can't end! Not like this! We have to do something!"  
Ami grimaced. "Well, we'd better do it quick. She's ordered to be out of the dorm by seven o'clock tonight. They even say they'll call the police to kick her out if she isn't."  
"Eh? Who'll call me?"  
Both girls jumped to the side at the sound of Ranma's voice, squeaking in surprise as their hearts leapt into their throats.  
"S-Saotome-san! Don't DO that!" Minako said, holding a hand over her heart. "How long were you standing there, anyway? I didn't even see you come in!"  
Ranma blinked. "Not long. I've been... around. I was just checking back in to make sure Usagi-chan is okay. I'm pretty good at moving around without being noticed. Sorry if I scared you."  
Ami frowned. "Isn't a bodyguard supposed to be EXTRA visible to scare away potential attackers?"  
"Maybe if the potential attackers aren't an army of cyborgs and monsters," Ranma shrugged. "Besides... I'd rather not explain why I'm always hanging around the campus when I don't go to school here."  
"Ah. Yeah. About that..." Minako said slowly, glancing at where Usagi was still sulking at her desk behind them. "That won't really be a problem. Usagi-chan isn't going to live here much longer."  
"Eh?"  
Ami sighed. "She failed all her mid-terms. They're kicking her out of school."  
"What?!" Ranma looked alarmed at the news, and raced over to Usagi. "Are you serious? How did you lose the soccer game after all the training I gave you?"  
Usagi sniffled. "I don't know... I did everything you told me!"  
"You didn't hit the goalie, did you? I made that mistake the first time, too. You're not allowed to make contact with the goalie."  
"But I didn't!" The cyborg insisted. "I did it just like you said! 'Aim for the knees, hit the center of the line, make sure to catch the ones running for the edge of the field so they can't flank you'!"  
Minako and Ami stared at the confused police officer with lidded gazes. "Suddenly it all becomes clear," the blonde deadpanned.  
Ranma shook his head. "Okay, well, it doesn't make any sense to me, but we can take care of this."  
"What?" Ami looked quite uncertain. "How? She's already been kicked out."  
"We'll work out a deal," Ranma decided.  
"I'm a bit concerned about who you meant when you said 'we'," Ami mumbled. "Do you mean us Senshi? Are we going to work together on this?"  
"I meant me and the guys," Ranma said. "Snake probably has some ideas, and Kyle... well... probably doesn't."  
Usagi slowly got up from her seat, looking slightly hopeful. "Do... do you mean it? Can you help?"  
Ranma grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. "Don't worry about it! Just leave it all to us!"  
"With all due respect, isn't that how she got INTO this mess?" Ami asked.  
"Total fluke," the pigtailed man explained away dismissively. "We're way better at convincing people to do what we want than we are at tests and stuff, anyway."  
"I'm just saying, perhaps it would be best if one of us were there to keep an eye on you," the bluette said cautiously.  
"Keep an eye on us?" Ranma asked. "We're cops, not Frat boys."  
Ami crossed her arms over her chest. "I've been to your headquarters, and I've talked to Asuka-chan."  
Ranma was silent for a few moments. "My point is still technically correct..."  
Usagi sweatdropped. "It's okay, Ami-chan. If Ranma-kun and the others are willing to help some more, then I accept."  
"I'm just a bit concerned about what they might end up doing..." the bluette hedged, glancing suspiciously at Ranma.  
Ranma smirked. "Like I said, we're cops! We're authority figures and everything! We can get this all sorted out, no problem!"  
"Without shooting anyone, I hope," Ami mumbled.  
Minako tsked. "Ami-chan, you need to lighten up. You're starting to sound like Rei. Weren't YOU the one who was telling US not to be too hard on these guys before?"  
The genius Senshi nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, but... you're right. I'm sorry." She sighed. "It's just that Usagi-chan has been through so much, recently... I guess I'm just feeling a bit overprotective."  
"Aw... Ami-chan..." Usagi's eyes started tearing up, and she rushed forward to trap the bluette in a hug as she was overcome with warm and fuzzy feelings. "I love you guys so much! I really do! I couldn't ask for better friends!"  
"Well, then you should probably let go before you lose one," Minako said with a nervous smile.  
Usagi blinked, and then looked down before her eyes bugged out at seeing Ami's cheeks rapidly approaching her hair in their coloring. "Ack! Sorry!"  
"_Cough!_ It's _Cough!_ okay... I'm all right... _Cough!_ Wow... you really don't know your own strength, do you?"

In the meantime, Ranma slunk further into the far corner of the dorm, glad he had been saved from having to make any kind of response to Ami's comment.  
'I'd like to make sure no one gets shot too... but the only way to do that is to leave Snake out of it. And I can't do that, because he comes up with the good ideas when it comes to this sort of thing.'  
Of course, Asuka came up with the BEST ideas, in that they usually worked, were well-received, and never ended with him being in the center of a fiery explosion. But the police captain didn't usually support the abuse of police power for personal benefit - or in this case, the benefit of a friend - so her participation was not only unlikely, but would probably end with the complete scrapping of the objective and maybe a few bruises to boot.  
'Well, whatever happens, we're going to be busy tonight, which means no vampire hunts.' He sighed. 'I wish someone else could take on the stupid raids once in a while. It's exhausting...'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Sir, there's someone here to see you," the guard said uncertainly, stepping into the overseer's office and bowing politely.  
Behind a large oak desk, a rather plain-looking but taut man with a goatee frowned at the intrusion. "Well, send them away. I'm not to be disturbed now."  
Ignoring the guard's slightly nervous expression, the overseer of the Lucky Six singles' club went back to staring at the girl sleeping in the corner of the room.  
The girl was young, perhaps around fourteen or even younger, and had unblemished, pale skin and thin, almost gaunt look, as was the appearance usually taken on by young vampires.  
Well, actually, her skin wasn't ENTIRELY unblemished. The slowly healing bloody tears in her cheek and lower jaw could certainly be considered blemishes. Her face had been wrapped loosely in bandages, but the job looked haphazard at best; none of the vampires were doctors, and even if they were, there were very few medical experts who would know what to do with an injured midian who wasn't yet capable of regeneration. The best they could figure was that they didn't want to tie the bandages too tightly, or else the bones might not be able to grow back in the proper place... or something to that effect.  
The overseer's neutral expression shifted into a hateful scowl, his lip rising over sharply pointed canines. This girl was a favored thrall of his; an attractive, rebellious teen who had desired to find some manner of freedom from her strict and unforgiving parents. Such an attitude by mothers and fathers were greatly appreciated by vampires, as tight rules helped keep their children virginal while creating an undercurrent of resentment for the newly turned vampires' minds to grasp onto when it came time for them to rationalize their new existence.  
She had returned to him after her first solo hunt with her jaw caved in and tears streaming down her cheeks... along with other, more repulsive fluids. He had been unable to make any sense of her pained mumbling and choked sobs, so he still wasn't sure what happened, but he got the distinct impression that what happened was no accident.  
There were people on the streets who lived the hard life, going without reliable shelter or steady income, and they tended to fight back in their final moments with whatever weapons they carried around with them. Though it was very rare that they even managed to hit the one preying on them, much less hurt the creature, lucky shots did happen, and in these days where the danger of the nighttime streets was becoming more and more obvious, those who had no shelter were taking more precautions.  
If it had been some random street tough and his crowbar that had hurt the girl, and that fellow was still alive, then he would dearly wish he had simply bowed his head and died there.  
"GYAH!"  
The man turned sharply as his office's guard crashed through the door, and he opened his mouth to reprimand whoever was coming through after him.  
His words died a quick and painful death as he recognized who had just hurled his minion through the door; and thus, who he had just denied a meeting with. "K-K-Kimiko-sama! It's you! I... I had no idea that... I mean, I couldn't... uh..."  
The vampire on the ground coughed painfully for a moment, then noticed his superior's response to the appearance of the woman. "Eh? Is she someone important, boss?"  
The overseer looked horrified as Kimiko glared down at the guard, her eye twitching. "I grow more and more weary of the foolishness brought about by these moronic operations. Are we so numerous now that some of us aren't aware of the chain of command?"  
"I-I'm sorry!" The overseer pleaded, rushing around his desk and bowing deeply. "The fault is mine! We were ordered to increase security so suddenly, I gave him no training! He doesn't know any better! Forgive him!"  
"At the least you could have chosen someone with manners," the platinum-haired woman snapped before turning toward the man on the ground. "You there! I don't know what sort of upbringing you had, and I don't care. But abandoning your humanity is no excuse for abandoning all pretense of civilization. From this day forward, you will greet guests kindly and defer to them, asking their name before you arrange their audience with your superior. Is that clear?"  
The man stared at her blankly, then flipped to his feet in a show of dexterity that would have impressed anyone... if they were human and not particularly athletic. "Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here and talking to me like that? How about a little RESPECT, bitch?"  
The overseer's eyes widened in horror.  
_Splortch!_ The vampire guard emitted a high-pitched shriek as his back burst open and the contents of his abdomen spurted out onto the floor. He didn't know what to do; he didn't know what he COULD do. One moment the woman had been rolling her eyes, as if she was about to let the whole thing go, and the next, the silk mantle around her neck was suddenly rising, as if lifted by a sudden breeze. The moment after that... well, here he was, impaled on what he was starting to suspect was more than just a fashion accessory.  
Kimiko snorted as the guard started rasping and coughing up globs of blood and other fluids. "Since you seem a bit slow on the uptake, I'll spell it out for you; being rude not only lets people know that YOU'RE an incompetent moron who thinks his very important job of standing in front of a door makes him better than everyone else, but it also reflects poorly upon your employer... think about it. If you insult a guest, and you're put in the guest's way by Johta, then it may as well be Johta himself insulting that guest. And who knows what that individual has to offer? Money, supplies, information, protection... all lost, because you decided your pride was more important than common courtesy."  
Then she blinked, as if suddenly remembering something. "Oh. Also, this sort of thing won't happen." She gestured to the mantle gently quivering within the vampire's body. Then the mantle lifted him up into the air, and swifly retracted itself from the guard, letting him fall onto the floor with a wet _Splat!_ "I mean, LOOK at this mess. Who's going to pay to have that carpet spot-cleaned? Are you going to give the cleaners attitude too?"  
In response, the guard gurgled incoherently, and spat up another puddle of fluids onto the floor.  
"... Kimiko-sama..." the overseer, apparently named Johta, finally gathered the nerve to speak. "... You show great restraint and patience to leave this fool in one piece. I am deeply grateful, and apologize once again for this incident." He bowed deeply, though in his head he was annoyed that she had not simply killed the fool. Now he had to do so himself after she left; no one could get away with treating a vampire lord like that, and what Kimiko hadn't taken out of the guard's hide she would deduct from his standing among the superiors.  
"Nonsense. I would never kill someone over an insult. I have nothing to gain from this one's death." She stepped forward over the writhing midian, and a chair slid out of the corner to rest behind her just before she sat down.  
The guard groaned pitifully, and did his best to drag himself to the door after finding that his legs had been rendered useless. Evidently the vampiress's mantle had punched through his spine. All damage that would heal, of course, but given that he was less than a month dead, it would take days.  
His plight was largely ignored by the two older vampires. Kimiko opened her mouth to speak, and then frowned as she noticed the girl curled up in the corner. "What's wrong with her?"  
"She took something in the face while she was out feeding this morning; I'm not sure what." Johta sighed regretfully, though he was glad he had a topic to take attention away from the man bleeding all over the floor of his office. "She got back just after daybreak and fell right asleep. She still hasn't woken up... even with all that noise we were just making..."  
"A regenerative trance," Kimiko decided after a moment. "It looks like she fed before she was hurt, so she'll sleep straight through the night and probably all day tomorrow. After that she should be fine. Though I'd rather like to know what hit her..."

Shaking her head, Kimiko pursed her lips as she brought herself back to the uncomfortable reality of why she was here.  
Kimiko had been ordered to slaughter the DAPC. She had been serving under Ran long enough to know that showing up at his doorstep and asking forgiveness for her failure wasn't really an option. Oh, he wouldn't kill her for failing him or anything so cliche as that, but rather he'd simply yell at her a lot and then send her out to complete the same task again. Ran tended to approach every problem like a target that would eventually fall so long as he fired enough shots at it, and always kept firing until it did so. Such stubborn perseverance had its advantages, but more often than not for a vampire it was an impediment to rational thinking. Kimiko considered herself an expert at rational thinking, so she would know.  
The main problem was that she had expended the unlives of two elder vampires fruitlessly; she couldn't confirm a single death among the enemy's ranks - though she imagined that they MUST be numerous - but everyone in her strike force save herself had been cut down. This was beyond unacceptable, and frankly she didn't know how her master would react to the news. Yamato in particular had known Ran for more than two centuries, and they had been good friends as well as master and subordinate.  
Although vampires WERE entirely ageless, there were few indeed among their number that could claim to be more than even a century old. They were the elite, having come from a time when the old ways had been followed and new midians were scarce; masters of stealth, cunning, and discretion, open combat was somewhat new to them, but their powers were formidable and their wisdom honed from witnessing the passage of entire generations of humans.  
And yet it had not been enough. Somehow, human ingenuity and modern weapons had triumphed against centuries of experience and dark magics right out of man's worst nightmares.  
There were times when she really hated being right.  
"There has been a grave miscalculation in a mission I was carrying out," she mumbled darkly, and Johta flinched. She had not seemed nearly so disturbed when his guard had insulted her, and the flash of emotion frightened him quite badly. "My assassination team was wiped out. I require ten vampires, in addition to your own services."  
She realized after she had retreated that despite all her common sense and caution, she had made an idiotic tactical error in waiting until the DAPC was more or less together and then assaulting them in a fortified building well-supplied with weapons. She had been acting like her younger brethren, assuming that victory was assured from the start and planning the attack in such a way to simply minimize the time it would take.  
If she had been patient, like the vampire lords she had idolized during the first decades of her undeath, she would have taken the assassin's path, tracking them down to their homes one by one and slaying them in their sleep when they were alone and trapped.  
She sighed as she watched the overseer ponder her request carefully. It was too late; her best allies were slain and the humans would now be on their guard. But she would try again, and this time she would lead the attacks personally. That way, at least if they were all wiped out again she'd be spared the humiliation of having to explain things to Lord Ran.  
"Is MY personal participation absolutely necessary?" Johta asked, being careful not to look too put-upon. "There are many tasks I have to see to here, and fights start easily nowadays when I'm not around."  
"I understand, but this task is of the utmost importance, coming from Lord Ran himself," Kimiko explained, satisfied at the wince she got from the younger vampire at the mention of their lord's name. "I cannot risk further delays," she continued, being careful to keep vague exactly what the "delays" were that she had already suffered, "and should I fail, Lord Ran would be MOST displeased. And when Lord Ran is displeased, I'm usually quite displeased as well."  
The sound of the office door closing could be heard from behind the two conversing vampires, and Kimiko smirked as she glanced at the blood smear running from behind her chair back to the door where the severely wounded guard had just made his exit. "You've seen that I can be rather vindictive when someone disappoints me. Not as much as others, perhaps... but it would be best for all concerned if you'd follow orders."  
"Understood," the overseer said calmly, despite the threat. It was true, after all, that the vampiress before him was far more rational and forgiving than any of her peers. He didn't want to test the limits of that patience. "I will make preparations immediately. When will we be leaving?"  
"You can expect... hmmm..." She frowned for a moment. "Did you hear that?"  
"Hear what?" Johta asked, blinking.  
Kimiko concentrated, extending her unnaturally sharp hearing to an even greater and more sensitive range. It was a difficult skill, as she was right next to a night club, and the din of music and the people talking over it punished her delicate ears, but she was among the elite of the elite, and such things were not beyond her.  
"Kimiko-sama? Is something wrong?"  
The vampiress's frown deepened. "It was a cracking noise... like something breaking... or maybe a gunshot? And now..." Her head snapped up. "Footsteps. Lots of them. Somebody's marching this way. It sounds like there's some sort of scuffle going on, too."  
Johta blinked, not understanding what was going on. "What? Within the club? It's probably just-"  
"No, from outside the club," she said quickly, cutting him off. "From about... twenty meters from the premises in that direction," she pointed toward the office door.  
"And... you can HEAR that?" The overseer boggled.  
"The footfalls are heavy. Too heavy." She glanced at Johta. "Prepare an evacuation. I do believe the Central Organized Response Echeleon has found us."  
Johta's eyes widened. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Kimiko was wrong. Completely, utterly, horribly wrong.  
But in the end, she may have wished she had been right.

"Eh? What's that?" One of the four guards holding the front of the night club leaned over a bit as he saw a red glare piercing the shadows of a dark alley ahead, trying to glance at what was hiding further in.  
With his vampiric night vision, the darkness was little impediment, and he could easily make out a tall, heavy-set figure in a long coat stepping out of the alley.  
He could also see the large rifle slug across the intruder's back, but that wasn't what grabbed the midian's attention. "Wh-What the hell?" The intruder's face was entirely covered by a metal plate with a single red lens where its left eye should be, and his left arm ended in ragged stump into which led dozens of wires and a thick metal rod connected to a bizarre mechanical claw.  
The other guards turned, and the one of them that was armed drew his pistol rapidly, aiming at the bizarre intruder. In response, the cyborg stopped in place and turned its head dumbly toward them.  
_Blam! Blam! Ptnk!_ The tiny 9mm. bullets from the midian's pistol bounced harmlessly off of the various metal plates under the plain brown trench coat, and the cyborg turned its body toward the guards, stopping and waiting as four more of the biomechanical soldiers stomped out of the alley behind him.  
_Blam! Blam! Blam! Click!_ The lone armed guard gulped as his pistol clicked empty and numbly stared at the five intruders along with the other guards as they lined up and stood in place. He hadn't expected to actually need the weapon and therefore hadn't bothered to bring additional ammunition; after all, who could he possibly face that he'd actually need a gun to fight them?  
More heavy footfalls alerted the guards to someone approaching from the streets down from the main alley, where their patrons usually came from. Six more of the strange cyborgs in trench coats stomped forward in a plain line formation, with a seventh leading them to the front.  
The one in the lead seemed different, though, and the vampires' eyes were immediately drawn to him. He was clearly a cyborg, but his movements were sure and steady, rather than the slow, clumsy-looking gait of the others.  
"H-Hey! What's going on here? What are those things? Who are you?" One of the other guards asked. The vampires were on edge, unable to decide on whether to charge or flee. They were fairly certain that they had to do one of them, as their senses screamed that the intruders were indeed hostile, but were paralyzed at that decision, each of the midians waiting to see what their comrades would do before they made their move.  
Igov smiled around the cigarette in his mouth. "Creatures of the night, Igov comes in peace! We seek audience with your leader, so that our peoples may yet prosper together in harmony." More cyborgs filed up behind the first two groups, stopping in careful formations of ranks.  
The vampires stared, too confused by the introduction to make any progress on their fight-or-flight response. "No dice, freak," one of the vampires snorted, "We don't make deals with walking hunks of fresh meat, even if they happen to have bits of metal sticking out of them.  
Igov blinked. "Ah. Well, is for the best." He shrugged as he snapped his fingers.  
Immediately, the cyborg soldiers reached behind them, grabbing the bolt rifles on their backs and moving into firing position.  
"Igov not make deals with walking hunk of rotten meat, even if still look fresh. Igov kindly ask you to perish now."  
The "lead" vampire, being the one that had managed to actually find a handgun to use, made his decision and dashed toward Igov. His friends leapt to the side, moving for the smaller concentration of cyborgs that had come up from the secondary alleyway.  
_Br-aap! Br-aap!_  
Gunshots momentarily cut through the nighttime silence, and two of the charging nosferatu fell to the ground, the force of the cartridges killing their momentum at the same time they blasted bloody chunks of flesh and bone out the midians' backs.  
The last vampire, either through wild dodges or sheer luck, managed to avoid the initial volley, and leapt snarling into the cyborgs' ranks, grabbing hold of one soldier's rifle and lurching forward to bite deeply into its neck.  
The guard was surprised at the amount of resistance he got from the skin, as well as the general lack of panicked flailing that he usually got from his victims, but dug his fangs in as deep as he could before drinking deeply of the tangy, bitter, unidentifiable substance that was now leaking out of the cyborg's neck.  
As slow as the cybernetic soldier was in reacting to this threat, it took advantage of vampire's vulnerability in his current position, releasing its rifle and then slamming a fist into the creature's stomach before activating its melee weapon.  
_Thoonk!_ The vampire gagged and released his victim as a heavy pile punched through his stomach and out his back, and writhed about painfully as the cyborg swung its arm and tossed him to the ground.  
Stepping forward roughly, the cyborg pinned the midian down with its foot, ignoring the thick, dark fluids seeping from its neck and dripping down its shoulder.  
_Target incapicitated. Initiate termination protocol._  
The other cyborgs, which had been more or less standing in place after the initial assault, turned and aimed their weapons at the downed vampires trying to crawl away to safety.  
_Br-aap! Br-aap! Br-aap! Br-aap! Br-aap! Br-aap!_

Igov spat out his cigarette as the lead vampire closed rapidly, preparing his defense for any odd weapons or truly impressive strength from the creature.  
He needn't have bothered. When the vampire slashed at his face, the Russian simply grabbed his arm and swung him to the side, dislocating the midian's shoulder and smashing him into the alley wall hard enough to leave cracks among the smear of blood.  
"Weakling. Your kind dare to prey upon humans?" Igov asked imperiously, stepping up to the undead man.  
The vampire jumped up suddenly and lunged, but Igov stopped him again, this time by clamping his right hand over the midian's face.  
The vampire clawed desperately at the cyborg's arm, but where sharp, hardened nails would have sliced through ordinary flesh and muscle, they only managed to rip up Igov's sleeves. "Igov is disgusted that you cause so much trouble. We will end your misery." _Crunch!_  
Snorting, the general shook his hand to rid it of the gore and bone fragments as he turned to watch his army move into position.  
"Boss, you sure about this? This raid seems kinda... risky, you know?"  
As the specks of vampire turned to dust on his hand, Igov glanced behind him at the genetically enhanced terrorists forming up the rear ranks behind the cyborgs. Having independent officers in charge of his units was annoying when there were so few suitable men for the job, but it was a necessary problem; the cyborgs were extremely slow to respond to changing battlefield conditions on their own if not following orders, and he was usually too busy fighting or monologuing to control the entire army himself.  
"Do you have concern you wish to share?"  
The terrorist winced. Igov wasn't particularly vindictive or impatient, but as a rule, soldiers in such organizations as the Freedom's Angels had to be very careful about questioning their superiors. "If we're really fighting vampires - and judging by the choppers on that creep who just disintegrated, we are - wouldn't it have been better to attack during the day?"  
Igov nodded. A simple question from a simple mind. "It would make battle easier, yes. But vampires unlikely to congregate during day, and also much weaker. If attack at night, these creatures believe they can win, and can be forced to make stand. During day they have no chance, so they have no choice but retreat. With our limited ability to pursue through city streets, it is imperative that we destroy targets, not rout them." He glanced over at the muscle-bound warrior, his optical implant rotating with a soft whirring noise. "Do you find fault with plan?"  
"No... No, I guess not," the terrorist mumbled, moving past his superior meekly. He didn't really see anything wrong with chasing the vampires away instead of fighting them down to the last one, but then, he was the genetically enhanced muscle and Igov was the tactical genius with a machine gun in his hand.  
"Good. Advance troopers and launch assault on my signal. Go!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are you sure? How did they find us?" Johta asked worriedly as he moved around his desk.  
Kimiko scowled, her fangs lengthening. "Gee, I wonder. What with armed security standing around a singles' club and wounded vampires limping back to roost, how hard would it be to track us here?"  
The overseer glanced over at his thrall, looking uncertain. "Surely you don't think-"  
"We must hurry!" Kimiko interrupted, opening the office door sharply and slamming it against the wounded guard that had only recently managed to drag himself back to his feet at his post. "They're surrounding us!"  
The vampiress frowned as she looked over the railing at the main floor below, where unsuspecting humans and vampires danced and mingled. "We need to evacuate. A fire alarm should do it."  
Johta winced as he followed after her. "Isn't there some other way? Why can't we fight them off? How strong can they be?"  
"I don't know, and I don't intend to find out. The humans have surprised me too many times recently, and it's been a rather unpleasant streak," she murmured. "Now let's see... we have a few moments. The authorities must have ascertained that there are normal humans here. They won't attack if there's a danger of harming civilians."  
_Crash! Tinkle! Crash!_  
The vampiress blinked and looked down through the mass of confused people as the shaded windows suddenly shattered inward, spotting the object that had been used to break them; a small metal cylinder.  
"Gas grenades! Damn!"  
Once again, she was wrong.  
_Boom! Boom! Boom!_ Screams and pained shouts started rolling through the crowd as the grenades started exploding violently, sending viciously scything metal shards into the tightly packed throng within the club.  
Kimiko blinked some more, her mouth hanging open. "Fragmentation grenades? ... That's downright **mean**."  
The crack of gunfire momentarily rose above the screams of the panicking crowd, and more glass rained down onto the floor as rifle fire poured in through the windows and cutting into the club occupants indiscriminately.  
Kimiko snarled and turned to the overseer. "Grab anyone strong enough to climb a wall bare-handed. We'll escape through the roof."  
"Wh-What?" Johta looked flabbergasted as he watched humans and vampires run toward the entrance in a disorderly tide. "And leave them all here to die? Can't we fight back?"  
"Listen, you-"

_Wham!_ The crowd scrambling for the front entrance pulled back as it was kicked in from the outside, sending the splintered remains of the door rolling into their feet.  
A single figure strode purposefully into the club, ignoring the background of screaming and volleys of gunfire. The red lens that glared brightly where his left eye should have been swept across the fearful crowd, and human and undead alike flinched back in fear and confusion.  
Behind the Russian General, dark, looming shapes started shouldering through the doorway, their weapons held at the ready. More red lights from sensors and lenses glared at the crowd from armored faceplates and peeked through folds in bandage wrappings and scarves. Each one of the biomechanical soldiers was different, a unique example of twisted mechanical artistry. Some looked entirely human save the bright red sensors that replaced their eyes, their implants hidden under folds of thick clothing. Others were bizarre monstrosities with strange, mechanical hands, whirling buzzsaw blades, and extra servo-articulated limbs mounted on their shoulders and torso.  
One vampire's fear inspired him to action rather than paralysis, and he dashed out of the crowd with his fangs bared, careless of the humans that were watching.  
Igov's hand snapped upward as the midian's fingers dug through a thin layer of false skin, only to find near-impervious armor underneath. Grabbing the undead by the throat, the Russian snatched his body right off the floor, and then grabbed one of the vampire's legs, holding the creature up parallel to the floor as it thrashed about uselessly.  
_KrrrrhHP!_ The crowd watched in stupefied horror as the vampire was literally torn in half before their eyes, and people in the throng started moving backward toward the other end of the building, braving the rifle fire rather than facing the cyborgs at the front entrance.  
Igov carelessly tossed the lower and upper torsos in his hands aside, and then swatted another vampire away that tried to charge him, knocking the midian back into the chaos of the panicked mob.  
Raising one hand, he briefly motioned forward. "Fire at will."  
_Chak! Chak! Ch-chak!_ Numerous rifles fell forward into firing position, and Igov's firing line opened up on the throng.

"Tch! This is worse than I expected. Much worse. Who ARE those... things?" Kimiko said, turning her gaze away from the rapidly thinning crowd below.  
After a few seconds of trying to ignore the screams and gunshots, Johta rushed back out of his office with four other vampires in tow and the now awake vampiress from his office in his arms.  
Kimiko scowled. "We're leaving, and we're not taking any wounded with us. Leave the girl here."  
The overseer gaped as the girl in his arms clutched him tighter. "Wh-What? But I couldn't, she-"  
"That was an ORDER, Johta, not a request," the vampiress snarled. "This isn't even a retreat anymore; it's a rout. Anyone who can't jump and scale walls on their own-" Her shoulder suddenly burst into chunks of dark red gore as a rifle round punched through it, splattering blood all over the floor.  
She glanced at her wound in annoyance as it regenerated, then glared at the overseer, who seemed paralyzed with indecision, and the younger midian, who was quite clearly paralyzed with fear. "Come on, you fool!" Her mantle lashed out and smacked the young vampiress aside, and then she grabbed hold of Johta's arm before pulling him quickly toward the roof access. She herself could simply float upward through the ceiling, of course, but none of these others had even power enough to levitate, much less phase through solid matter.

The girl let out a muffled whimper as she rolled to the ground, and then a brief look of determination crossed her features as she got up to follow the retreating elders.  
_Spack! Spack! Thunk!_ She flinched away as the wall in front of her burst into small explosions of wood and drywall, and she glanced anxiously at the throng below.  
The cyborgs had advanced into the club proper now, wading into the carpet of dead and dying and shooting into the retreating crowd pushing outward toward the rear exit. Some were battling vampires in melee that had decided to fight rather than get cut down from behind, and those attacked slowly but firmly with whirling blades and bone-splintering hydraulic piles as the midians clawed, tore, and bit uselessly at the automatons.  
She started to move forward again, only to stop as another vampire jumped up through the splintered railing to the side of her, clawing furiously to get up onto the higher floor.  
_Brakka-brakka-brakka!_ The vampire's back was ripped apart as a spray of gunshots dug through his spine and ribcage, and bits of blood and flesh splattered across the carpet as he slowly slid back over the edge of the floor, falling back down to the lower level as his body started to disintegrate.  
The girl couldn't quite explain what drew her to seek out the source of the man's demise instead of trying again to escape, but she timidly crawled to the edge of the floor, poking her head out above the shattered wooden railing to look down into what used to be the club's dance floor, and was now a carpet of corpses, blood, and metal.  
A single red eye glared back up at her, and her breath caught in her throat.  
'That... That man... with the gatling gun arm, he... he's the one who... I...' she scrambled backward until she hit the wall, her body going even colder than usual as she trembled. 'He followed me. Somehow... he followed me back. This... This is all my fault...'

Igov stared up at the second floor for a few more moments, and then reached behind him to get another vampire that was trying to get at his throat.  
Grabbing the undead creature by the shoulder, Igov shoved his gatling gun into the midian's chest and fired off a brief salvo, blowing the creature's chewed-up torso out its back.  
Stopping only for as long as it took to toss the body to the side, the Russian turned to another cyborg that was pinning another vampire to a column and slowly crushing her skull in one hand while restraining her arm with the other.  
"Sergeant, send small detachment up to second level immediately. Find original target and secure for transport. They are ordered to hold fire until further notice," the general said.  
The soldier turned toward him briefly. _Affirmative. Relaying commands. Unit three moving into target area._  
Turning back to its foe, the cyborg released the vampiress's arm before pressing its fist up against her head.  
_BLAM!!_ The concealed shotgun blew the midian's head into scraps, and the cyborg stepped down for a moment as it accessed its communication relays.  
_Units seven and nine are reporting that they have successfully held the barricade. All enemy targets neutralized. Sniper team Beta reports that a small detachment of enemy units have made it to the roof, and-_  
It stopped suddenly, and swiftly grabbed up its rifle before aiming it at someone trying to crawl past underneath the tables.  
Igov glanced at the man that had frozen in terror at being sighted, and shook his head. "Hold fire. That one is human. Is not enemy. Do not waste ammunition."  
_Affirmative._ The cyborg intoned sharply, turning away from the man as he scrambled further toward the door. _Heavy assault team Omega is on standby for pursuit of fleeing enemy units. Orders?_  
Igov smirked as he twisted a segment of his left bicep, causing dozens of spent bullet casings to sprinkle onto the floor from his elbow. "Launch pursuit. I will lead the hunt personally." Letting his arm fall back into place at his side, the Russian's body briefly glowed with a bright blue-white corona, and then vanished without a trace.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hurry, hurry!" Kimiko snapped as she floated up through the roof of the building, watching impatiently as the other vampires clambered swiftly up the ladder. Normally she would have expected any adult vampire to simply leap up such a paltry height, but they were undergoing a rather traumatic experience so she cut the young fools some slack.  
Johta in particular seemed to climb to the roof as if he were carrying lead weights, his face straining to remain cold and neutral.  
Kimiko fought down a groan and decided that either a sympathetic pat on the back or a cold, heartless scolding was due after they escaped. She had no idea why the overseer was so attached to that teenage brat - though she suspected there was a significant sexual factor - but he'd have to get over it. It was moments like this where only the strong survived and the weak were trampled beneath their feet.  
The vampiress glanced over the edge of the roof toward the back, and winced as she saw a steady stream of people, human and vampire, rushing out into the streets only to find a sandbag barricade in front of them... complimented with a small squad of the strange cyborg soldiers and a few heavy machine guns. Those vampires that tried to break off from the crowd or climb the walls were being ambushed and engaged in hand-to-hand combat by strange identical redheaded women in form-fitting outfits that, oddly enough, seemed to be winning those particular fights.  
'What is all this? These are not ordinary foes... it would seem that we've stepped on some dangerous toes indeed.'  
She turned to her fellow vampires and pointed to a spot high on the wall of the adjacent building. "Over there. Those strange women are concentrating on the crowd evacuating. We can escape-"  
_Thwip!_ One of the nosferatu let out a strangled cry as he slumped forward, a new hole in his skull.  
"Snipers too? Damnation!" She snarled. "Leave him! To the walls! As fast as you can, run!" A bullet pierced her own skull, spilling blood and fluids into her long mane of platinum hair, but she ignored it as flesh and bone moved to plug the hole and push the bullet out onto the roof.  
The four remaining vampires from the club leapt to the adjacent building, touching lightly on the surface and then scrambling upward rapidly in a manner not unlike geckos.  
Kimiko was more graceful, and floated upward at a speed to match the lesser midians' progress.  
_Thwip!_ Another of the vampires spasmed suddenly as blood splattered across the wall in front of him, and he lost his grip, plummeting down to the ground below.  
'Tsk. They're the oldest of this group... but still so young.' She shook her head.  
The death of their comrade seemed to spur the other vampires on faster and they clambered up onto the high-reaching roof of the tenement adjacent to the club, their eyes darting nervously from side to side.

Kimiko disgustedly blocked a sniper bullet with her mantle as she touched down on the roof with her subordinates, searching about for the best escape route.  
She fought off a sigh as she looked at her fellow midians; their eyes darted from side to side nervously, and despite the fact that vampires were quite impervious to even the mild discomfort caused by a late evening chill, a few of them were trembling.  
These creatures had been undead for less than a year, but the harsh reality that they could be hunted down, could be driven out, could be KILLED struck them like a hammerblow. No doubt they had all been victims of the same sweet allure, the shaky facade that vampires were kings among cattle and conquerors of death. These ones had not been schooled as she had been in the danger presented by those they hunted, and the deceptive frailty of their bodies.  
She walked across the length of the roof, forcibly ignoring the lingering screams and spurts of gunfire below. She then pointed to the next rooftop adjacent to the one they were standing on. "There. We can make our way across the rooftops to the graveyard, and enter the sewer via the mausoleum tunnels."  
"The sewers? Why? Can't we just go to one of the other hideouts?"  
"If they followed us here, they can follow us there," Kimiko snapped. "Until we know more of their methods for tracking us, we will use EXTREME caution."  
"This is wrong..." Johta mumbled. "This is all wrong! How could they do this? How could they find us and beat us so easily? At night, with so many of us?"  
"Tsk. Johta-kun, you'll find that in this world, there are many things more terrible and powerful than the vampire. Humanity is one of them; you'd do well to remember that." She hesitated for a moment. "I suppose you can include those... things below as well, if they aren't human themselves."  
The assembled nosferatu looked absolutely devastated at the news, and Kimiko fought off a sigh. "Let's move quickly. We may have only a short time before-"  
_Shoooooft!_ The vampires' head all snapped toward a glowing mass of blue and white energy that appeared on the rooftop they were about to leap to, and they snarled when it faded away to leave a tall, foreign man with light gray hair, a cybernetic eye, and a gatling gun for an arm.  
Kimiko's eyes narrowed, but she held her position. This enemy was an unknown power, much like that blonde girl had been. So long as she held her peace, however, she too was an unknown power; few were able to guess at her strength and abilities by looking at her.  
Igov gazed at the undead on the adjacent roof, and he slowly took out a carton of cigarettes out of his pocket as he spoke. "This was good raid. But is... sad, that coven of such creatures as you not provide better defense." He clenched the last of his cigarettes between synthetic polymer lips and tossed the carton away. "Is this all that ancient, feared vampire has to offer?"  
Before any of the others had a chance to say something stupid, Kimiko spoke up in a firm, clear tone free from any fear or arrogance. "Perhaps it is. Did you attack seeking a challenge? Why are you here?"  
Igov looked up, his biological eye locking gazes with the vampiress. "Igov is here as exterminator, nothing more. You feed on men. Igov objects to this. Igov will crush you all, so that men are safe. Surely you filth expect such things."  
One of the midians snarled angrily and looked like he was about to speak, but Kimiko silenced him with a glare. This was not lost on the general.  
"Pardon my rudeness, but you do not seem... how to put this tenderly... human," Kimiko said wryly. "What right have you to judge us as monsters?" Her ears twitched slightly in the late evening chill as a distant roaring sound was heard above another volley of rifle fire.  
"Hmmm..." the cyborg seemed to seriously consider the question as he rolled the cigarette about between his lips. "One may not call Igov... 'human,' but Igov still clings to humanity as species of birth, if nothing else." He raised an eyebrow. "What troubles vampires so that they so quick to kill and eat own kind?"  
"We cannot help our nature," the vampiress said, distracted as she was trying to glance about her discreetly to spot the source of the noise. Judging from the sudden nervousness of her companions, she wasn't the only one, either.  
Igov simply snorted. "Humans choose own nature. Are you truly so weak, you cannot hold onto even this?" The source of the noise became apparent as two large, bulky shapes rocketed over the nearby buildings, cresting the roofs as moonlight glinted off of their blue armor.  
_Fzsht!_ Igov smirked in amusement when the midians across from him winced from the sudden flash of light produced by his Tesla claw as he lit his cigarette; while both he and the undead were fighting in extremely low light, neither of them suffered any hindrance from it. Bright light, on the other hand...  
Kimiko watched carefully as the two blue-plated robots gently set down atop the roofs of the building to either side of her group; they were now boxed in, with guns to the front, to both flanks, and an army to their rear. Which way to go...  
"Do not trouble me, tin man," the vampiress said suddenly as her mantle billowed out, stretching wide to curl around her entire company, blocking any fire from any side. "I am in the middle of a retreat. You have seen vampires in battle; disorganized, foolish, and easily panicked. You would not wish to face such a beast that's been cornered."  
'This woman... she is playing a different game than the others...' Igov wasn't sure what it was about her that tipped him off, but he sensed that the platinum-haired midian was definitely the leader... and perhaps more. The others, though obviously agitated and frightened, refused to act out of turn or interrupt her speeches, and she seemed to be willing to protect them instead of launching an attack.  
_Chunk! Ka-chunk!_  
Igov smiled at the woman through her mantle as the Devastator-class boomers leveled their heavy cannons.  
"My good lady... There is no retreat here. There is only blood and ash." He tapped the button on his optical peripheral.  
_Foosh!_  
Kimiko was prepared for the robots to open fire. No matter how powerful their shots were, she had been determined to stand firm through the first volley, and then escape through one of the boomers as the dust settled.  
She was utterly unprepared for the two robots to instead activate their high-beams, splashing spotlight-power rays of light through her mantle and into her unprepared retinas. She spat a curse as her eyes clamped shut, as did many of her companions'.  
THEN the boomers opened fire.  
At the roof under the vampires' feet.  
_BWOOM!! BWAKOOM!!_

Igov smirked as the top floor of the building collapsed into a cloud of dust and rubble, confident that the midians had been too stunned to react well to the fall.  
_Boom! Boom!_  
Two more explosions threw more brick and debris into the air, and the boomers up top launched their full salvo of rockets down into the caved-in roof of the tenement.  
He briefly considered adding his own firepower, but relented as one of the heavy cannon shells tore through a key support, and the entire structure shook violently as it started to crumble.  
"This is General Igov to all teams," he spoke quickly, fingering his radio antennae, "the eastern structure has sustained heavy damage and may topple. All units, clear out to twenty meters."  
A deep rumble momentarily drowned out the gunfire from below, and Igov frowned as the structure started to sink, the top floors slowly collapsing one by one on the floors below.  
He changed the frequency on his transmitter. "This is General Igov to decoy team. Status report."  
_Ksht! This is unit Red Flag, reporting. Two dispatches have broken from pursuit of the decoy teams and are headed uptown... one moment... three dispatches. Police reports are swimming with reports of heavy weapons fire in your area. ETA eighteen minutes._  
"Has Core or the DAPC been dispatched?"  
_Core has been contacted and is readying quick response units, but it's unlikely they'll deploy in time. There have been calls made to the DAPC... but nobody at the station is picking up, for some reason._  
Igov raised an eyebrow. "Curious. However, is possible they may hear of the disturbance via police radio frequencies. Order all decoy teams to withdraw; mission complete."  
_Affirmative. Krsht!_  
The cyborg glanced down at the pillar of dust that was rising from the fallen tenement, and then started setting the coordinates for a chrono jump. 'Odd that they aren't there, though. I wonder what they're doing...'  
_Shoooooft!_

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Usagi fiddled nervously with the bow on the top of her blouse as the waiter left the table, having taken her order. She was currently wearing her casual clothes against recommendations by Makoto and Minako, and was dressed in a perfectly girly but conservative pink blouse with bows and a pair of jeans.  
Though she had been surprised when Ranma offered to treat her to dinner, he had assured her that his intentions were professional (his exact words were something to the effect of "I'm not tryin' to hit on your or nothing, really!"), and she believed him. Makoto and Minako both scoffed at that, and though the former expressed much regret that the pigtailed cop wasn't HER beefy-looking bodyguard and eventual body pillow, they both eagerly recommended that Usagi doll herself up and prepare for a night of romanticism and wild passion.  
Judging by the fact that the man sitting across from her was dressed in uniform, complete with body armor and sidearm, Usagi had to guess that she had made the right call.  
"I heard this place has some really good calamari steaks, so I thought I should try some," Ranma said, clearly a bit uncomfortable himself as he tried to stir up conversation.  
"Oh, really? Maybe I should have ordered that..." the blonde cyborg said, fiddling some more as she trailed off.  
There was a long, awkward silence as the both of them tried to think of something to say.  
"So... uh... Ranma-kun..." Usagi squirmed for bit, uncertain.  
It certainly wasn't normal for her to be so shy, but then, very little had been "normal" recently, even considering the standards to be expected in the life of a demon-hunting magical girl. Her body had been torn apart and rebuilt, her love life had been torn apart and NOT rebuilt, there were big plans and various assaults on robots and vampires and whatnot that were constantly being tweaked and put off "for the right moment," and her friends were suggesting, if not **pressing**, for her to take advantage of Ranma's current position as her protector and jump his bones. It was more than a little confusing, and she was far less sure of herself than she would have been otherwise.  
The situation with Ranma was particularly awkward; he was very attractive, she could give him that, and had a brash, thoughtless honesty that resonated well with her. But, putting aside whether or not HE was interested, her heart still belonged to Mamoru, and Ranma wasn't a perfect substitute. As far as protecting her, sure, he was a good fighter, but he lacked the class and romanticism of Tuxedo Kamen's appearances, and he certainly wasn't very good at encouragement. Off the battlefield, Ranma was easy to talk to and kind-hearted, but he lacked the air of mature, princely dignity that Mamoru had, instead acting laid back and self-assured; honestly, it was a little intimidating.  
The pigtailed man didn't look very self-assured right now, though, and it was throwing Usagi off further. Was he wondering the same things she was? Was she being judged against all the girls in his life?  
Across the table, Ranma gulped down some tea as his thoughts raced furiously. 'Stupid! You don't even like calamari that much! Even if it is the specialty, you should have stuck with eel!'  
"So, Ranma-kun..." Usagi tried again, catching his attention, "... are you... you know, on duty?"  
Ranma nodded immediately. "Yup. Still guarding you from evil terrorist robots. Why?"  
"Well, I mean..." she looked around nervously. "Did you... have a REASON for taking me out to dinner?"  
Ranma blinked. "Oh. That. Heh." He slapped the back of his hand and smiled sheepishly. "Well, like I said, I'm not trying anything weird. This is just... well, it's part of the plan."  
It was Usagi's turn to blink. "Plan? What plan?"  
"The plan for getting you re-admitted to the college," he clarified. "Snake was very specific that you had to be away from the campus all evening, in a well-frequented area with lots of witnesses. He even suggested that I make the reservation in your name so that there's a record of you being here."  
The ponytailed blonde frowned as she thought that over. "Huh... that's odd. Why?"  
"Ah..." Ranma sweatdropped as he considered that question.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(A few hours ago)  
"So all you have to do is take her out for a little bit. Nothing fancy, just an evening out on the town. Go for dinner, maybe watch a movie, whatever. You can make a date out of it, if you want," Snake shrugged apathetically before he pulled the ski mask down over his head.  
Several sweatdrops adorned Ranma's head as he looked over at Junko and Kyle, the former of which was helping the latter decide whether to leave his hair down or to try and roll it all into the confines of the mask.  
"Uh... so, wait... are you saying that she's going to need an alibi for... whatever it is you won't tell me you're doing?"  
Snake chuckled and patted the pigtailed man on the shoulder. "Ranma, Ranma, Ranma... if you have to ask that, then either you already know the answer, or you don't want to know."  
Junko finished with Kyle's mask, and then gave Snake a thumbs-up. "We're all ready! Let's do this!"  
Ranma glanced over at the barren front desk of the DAPC lobby. "Uh... aren't you all supposed to be on duty tonight?"  
Snake blinked underneath his mask. "Oh! Right! Thanks for reminding me!" He fished into his pocket for a moment, and then produced a key before tossing it to Ranma, who caught it easily. "Do me a favor and lock up, would you?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well... they don't want you to worry about it, that's all," Ranma half-lied, scratching the back of his head. "I'm sure whatever they came up with will work."  
"You mean they didn't tell you what they were going to do?" Usagi asked, surprised.  
"No, but that's okay. I'm not worried about it," he completely lied, trying not to make eye contact.  
Usagi leaned back in her chair. "Well, okay. I'm a little relieved, actually. Mina-chan and Mako-chan were SURE that this was a date." She blinked. "Uh, not that I wouldn't want to date you! It's just that, I'm taken! Or, technically, I guess I'm NOT, but I still don't think it would be good for me to see other people, so... uh..."  
Ranma looked slightly overwhelmed from her babbling, but didn't want the conversation to descend into awkward silence again. "So you do have a boyfriend, huh? Or is it someone you're hoping will be your boyfriend?"  
Usagi fidgeted for a moment, blushing like she always did right before she went into a long tirade about how wonderful Mamoru was. "Well, he's more than my boyfriend, really, but we're on... I guess you could say... a break, or something..." her blush faded and her expression saddened. "He... uh... didn't take the whole 'cyborg' thing very well."  
"I guess most guys wouldn't... then again, you had that magical girl thing before, didn't you? How'd he take that?"  
Usagi snickered a bit. "He took it pretty well. Do you remember in the park, Tuxedo Kamen? The guy with the mask and the top hat? That's him."  
"Oh, that guy!" Ranma said, remembering the fellow quite well. "Huh. I guess he would work pretty well with a magical girl for a girlfriend. Heh. Those were some NASTY roses."  
"Uh huh! Tuxedo Kamen is really strong!" Usagi gushed happily. "He always appears in the nick of time to save me, and he's sooooo cool! He always knows just what to say to cheer me up in the middle of a fight!"  
"He sounds all right," Ranma mused. "But he didn't go for the whole cyborg thing, eh?"  
The blonde girl sighed miserably. "Who can blame him?"  
"Ah, c'mon! There're worse things to be than a cyborg. Hell, you're actually pretty cool!"  
"Maybe I'm cool, but who would date me?" She mumbled.  
Ranma shook his head. "You're thinking too hard about this cyborg thing. Like I said, there are worse things to be."  
"Like what?" Usagi asked slowly, raising her head hopefully.  
"Like, say... a klutz who can't cook!" Ranma answered, snapping his finger brightly.  
He blinked as the girl across from him suddenly looked even more downcast. 'Maybe I should have gone with violent tomboy?'  
"Uh, hey... is it really THAT important to you?" Ranma said suddenly, scratching his chin.  
Usagi looked up at him hesitantly. "Uh? Is what important?"  
"The dating thing," Ranma clarified. Then he carefully lowered his voice so that even a waiter brushing past their table wouldn't be able to make out what he was saying. "I mean... you're a famous magical girl, right? You have some kind of destiny to protect the world or whatever, and thousands of fans all over Japan. You've got a family that cares about you. You've got great friends at your school, and even in the DAPC. You're a cyborg, and you can sense monsters at long range, shoot energy blasts, dispense candy, surf the internet with your mind, and fly. After all that, is it really that important that you have a steady boyfriend?"  
Usagi blinked. Several times, in fact.  
"... Yes. Yes it is," she admitted after a long pause, slumping back in her chair.  
Ranma sweatdropped. "Oh. Uh... hey! Look! Our food is here!" He said desperately, eager to cease conversation so that he could avoid driving Usagi's mood down further.  
Usagi gratefully took advantage of the distraction as well. It was sweet of Ranma to try to cheer her up, but he wasn't very good at it. Food, on the other hand, was always a sure pick-me-up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Move! Move! On the double! Let's go!" The terrorist shouted frantically at the line of cyborgs as they stepped into the trucks, their rifles secure on their backs. Into another, more secure truck, a smaller group of the cybernetic cadavers dragged twitching, spasming vampires into the rear, leaving long smears of blood on the ground behind the wounded abominations.  
One such vampire, a young teenage girl with her jaw wrapped up tightly, struggled mightily in the grip of a pair of steel, hydraulic-powered arms as she too was dragged toward the armored trailer.  
"H-Hey! Hey you!" She shouted at the heavily muscled man, fighting a wince. It felt weird to talk at the moment thanks to her shattered jaw, but apparently she had regenerated enough to speak coherently. "You there! Human! Release me! Please!"  
The terrorist glanced at her and snorted, though he gestured for the cyborg to halt. "What do you want, freak?"  
"What are you doing here?" She asked desperately. "Who are you people?"  
_Pchak!_ The vampiress trembled as the man brought up a pistol and pressed the muzzle into her temple. "We're the Freedom's Angels, dead bitch. We work to remove ALL the enemies of the people. Today, that includes you bloodsuckers."  
"Wait... Angels? The terrorists? You guys are terrorists?" She asked in disbelief. "Then... why attack US?"  
The man stared at her in disgust. "Why the hell do you think? Just be thankful we don't kill all you monsters off!" _Thwack!_ He smashed the butt of his weapon into the girl's already-damaged jaw, and smirked in satisfaction as he heard bones crack noisily from the blow. "Get this filth out of my sight!" He commanded.  
The cyborg immediately stepped back toward the truck, the girl in its arms moaning pitifully.  
"W-Wait... please... don't do this... I'm begging you..."  
The cyborg did not stop at the sound of her voice, of course, as it was not authorized to take commands from wounded prisoners.  
It DID stop as a particularly tall and very distinguished cyborg stepped in front of it.  
Igov smirked down at the little midian trembling before him, his cybernetic eye shining brightly. "You feed relentlessly on helpless, and yet when defeated you ask for mercy. How... human of you."  
Igov gestured with his hand, and a small group of cyborgs dragged several other vampires off to the side.  
The vampire girl stared at them with wide eyes; these vampires had not been destroyed, but were severely wounded; some were missing limbs or even parts of their torso, but had not perished because their hearts and brains remained intact. They were being gathered together, but not into a truck... rather, they were being dragged into a long line, and dropped there as their carriers backed up and withdrew their weapons.  
"This is fate of all your kind. Of all creatures that think to prey on humans." He snapped his fingers, and the girl flinched away as a thunderous volley of gunfire came from the cyborgs.  
Igov grabbed the girl's head, turning it back to face him. "Know this, creature: nothing that stalks night and haunts men's nightmares is terrible or powerful as man himself. Look around you; these machine forged from flesh are creations of humanity, which you forsake for what? Power? Superiority? Longevity? How foolish."  
"Wh-What... What are you... going to do with me?" The girl asked. Her heart would have been pounding if it beat at all.  
"What we do with all monstrosities such as you:" the Russian smirked cruelly, "Dissection and experimentation. You and your kind will merely be tools in Angels' armory."  
To the side of them, a group of terrified humans advanced slowly with their hands in the air, several cyborgs at their back with rifles leveled.  
"General? What should we do with the humans that survived?" The terrorist asked, ignoring the vampire girl as he stepped up.  
Igov glanced over them, letting go of the midian. He grimaced. "Ugh. Too young. And these ones too frightened. Leave them be." He waved his hand dismissively, and the cyborgs guiding the group immediately broke off, shouldering their rifles and heading for the trucks. The bloodstained men and women looked confused for a moment, but they all quickly started running away once they realized that none of the strange cybernetic soldiers were watching them.  
"Are you sure that's okay?" The man asked, glancing at the fleeing people.  
"They know nothing that can harm us," Igov reasoned, distracted by something in the nearby alley. "Is likely they do not even understand what has transpired, even after witnessing battle. They cannot harm us." He turned back toward the terrorist. "Besides, is not best that Angels be known as destroyers of undead monsters?"  
The terrorist sweatdropped. "Yeah, but... we destroyed an awful lot of live humans, too."  
"Details. Prepare to move out. Authorities are on their way." The Russian started to walk away, but turned and cast a final glance up at the building next to them before he shook his head and made his way to the truck.

Clinging upside-down to the edge of the building, a lone bat stared after the trucks as they moved onto the road and departed, with a few of the strange, unusually strong women clambering up the sides of buildings and following along the rooftops.  
'He saw me, I'm sure of it,' Kimiko thought as she spread her wings and took off into the night. She briefly considered attacking the escaping convoy and trying to free the captured vampires, but decided against it. While she probably had surprise on her side, along with her not-inconsiderable powers, her foes may well have more surprises as well... and even if she rescued the hostages, the operation was already a total loss. The vast majority of the vampires were gone, including every one of the midians more than a decade dead, and the club was even now burning to the ground with the corpses of the fallen humans still inside.  
More to the point, SHE was still alive (sort of), and she needed to report this new enemy and their weapons to Ran. Regrettably, this would also mean reporting her failure to Lord Ran as well, but Kimiko recognized that the current threat was too serious for her to be worrying about her personal standing in the face of her peoples' annihilation.

Flapping leathery wings rapidly, she made a beeline for Ran's complex, reverting to her humanoid form and landing on a rooftop as soon as she had put a mile of distance between herself and the club.  
Kimiko frowned as she felt a minor wave of dizziness overcome her. "Damn. I haven't eaten since before the raid last night... And that fight was draining. I should feed before I return..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Mmmm, you were right! That calamari WAS delicious!" Usagi said brightly walking down the street with Ranma next to her.  
"Uh. Yeah. Delicious..." Ranma stared forlornly into his empty wallet, boggling at the fact that the night's meal had cost double what it usually did. 'I didn't expect her to eat as much as me! How does she stay so skinny?'  
He glanced up at her suspiciously, and then sweatdropped. 'Oh. Right. Cyborg. Well, at least she hasn't asked me for a cup of motor oil or anything weird.'  
"Ooh, a convenience store!" Usagi said suddenly, skipping forward toward a gas station.  
'Huh. On the other hand, dinner REALLY cheered her up.' He shrugged and smiled a bit as he sped up to catch her. "What, did you want MORE food?"  
"Maybe just a little hot dog. Oh, and a soda too!" Usagi turned around.  
Usagi blinked as Ranma held up his wallet, holding the folds open so that she could see the vastness of the empty space inside.  
The blonde cyborg pouted. "Oh, FINE. I'll pay for it myself."  
"You want a tune-up while you're here?" Ranma said, smirking. "Maybe an oil change?"  
A vein popped up on Usagi's head, and she stuck her tongue out at the pigtailed boy before running into the convenience store.

Ranma whistled to himself as he waited on the sidewalk, stretching a bit in the cool late evening air.  
_Clang!_ "Ah! H-Help! Somebody help me!"  
His head snapped to the side when he heard a woman cry out from a nearby alleyway, accompanied by the sound of rattling trash cans.  
Being the heroic young officer that he was (and the ONLY officer of the DAPC that truly deserved that title), Ranma dashed toward the alley, slipping into it without a second thought as to his safety.  
The pigtailed man was more than a little confused when he saw that the alley was completely empty.  
"Yo! Anyone here? Hello? I know I heard someone just now!"  
Frowning, he stepped forward past a pile of trash, expecting to find some thug holding down a girl with his hand over her mouth, preventing her from crying out.  
All he saw was trash.  
"But... wait... I know I-" _Splortch!_  
Ranma stared wide-eyed at the bolt of silk cloth that would have skewered him if he hadn't jumped out of the way instinctively. His eyes first ran down the length to the end, which had stabbed quite solidly into a trash bag and into some rotting leftovers. Then his eyes ran up its length, where it seemed to be jutting out of the wall of the alley.  
"Well. Ya think you've seen it all... and then something tries to stab you with a silk scarf," he mumbled aloud, poking the article of clothing to test its firmness. Despite being solid enough to stab into the trash bags, the length of the silk bolt was soft and flexible, just as any length of stretched-out silk should be.  
"Hmmm... excellent reflexes for a human," a distinctly female voice muttered as Kimiko phased out of the wall, floating in mid-air.  
Ranma stared at the woman for a moment, and then started rubbing his chin. "Wait, wait... let me guess..."  
Kimiko blinked. "What?"  
"A new robot?" The pigtailed man asked, pointing to her.  
The vampiress raised an eyebrow. "No."  
"Okay... some sort of super mutant lady?"  
"What?"  
"No... a martial artist, then? That would explain the iron cloth technique."  
Kimiko finally stopped to take a good look at the fellow in front of her, and noted the emblem embossed onto his body armor. "Wait a minute! You're with the DAPC?" She asked, alarmed.  
Ranma blinked as he finally noticed the pointed canines in her mouth. "Ah HA! You're a vampire!" Ch-chak! He immediately withdrew his Jackal and pointed it at her.  
Kimiko's expression fell as she drew her mantle back to her body. "Just great... of all the times and places to run into one of you..." Then her expression hardened, and her mantle waved about in the air before her to act as a shield. "But at least I can return to my lord with SOMETHING for my efforts. And with a full belly t-"  
_BLAM!_  
Kimiko's eyes widened as pain exploded in her arm, and gazed in alarm at the hole in her mantle, which had barely managed to deflect the bullet's trajectory from her face. "S-S-Silver bullets?" She winced some more as the pain started to spread slightly. "BLESSED silver. Were you waiting for me?"  
Ranma lowered his gun. "Nah, not really. But now that the vampires come after us, it just made sense to back the-" he suddenly shook his head. "Wait, what'm I talking to you for?" _BLAM! BLAM!_  
The two gunshots blew out chunks of brick as Kimiko quickly phased back into the wall she had come from and into the empty room on the other side.

"It seems my unfortunate streak continues... what to do..." she turned around and looked around the room for a moment, as if looking for something to inspire her  
Then she shook her head. "What am I thinking? I just fled from seeing an entire bastion of vampires destroyed! I can't risk fighting now, not against a properly armed vampire hunter!"  
Her path clear, she moved away from the wall, confident that she could simply find easier prey elsewhere.  
_Crunch!_ She was entirely unprepared for an arm to punch through the wall, grab the back of her dress, and then yank her back into the wall.  
Ranma was momentarily surprised as he pulled Kimiko back only for the vampiress to go straight through the wall and come out on his side, but he wasted no time in pressing his gun to her temple.  
Kimiko glanced at the pigtailed man, making a quick note of the way he was clinging to the side of a building with practically no handholds, as well as his apparent ability to put his fist through a brick wall.  
Then she exploded into a cloud of bats.  
Ranma nearly lost his grip on the wall as the bat swarm took off, but quickly regained his composure, and launched himself out into the swarm. "**Kachuu tenshin amaguriken**!" His hands blurred briefly as he passed through the dark, leathery cloud, and about half the swarm promptly fell out of the air and down to the roof below, their bodies broken.  
"Tsk!" Ranma landed easily, and frowned up at the remaining swarm. Then his eyes widened. "OW!" He tried to grab for something at his back, but a single bat zipped away with unnatural speed and agility, droplets of blood trailing from its mouth.  
"Damn it! Stop BITING me, you freaks!" The martial artist demanded, rushing across the roof after the bats.  
He screeched to a halt when all the bats, save the one that had just escaped him, suddenly glowed a bright blue and dove down at him.  
"Uh-oh. WHOA!" _BOOM! BOOM! KABOOM!_ Ranma dashed backward as the glowing bats impacted the roof below him with explosive results, not quite doing enough damage to put holes in the roof, but doing enough that Ranma decided he definitely didn't want to get hit.  
Up in the air, the bat that was Kimiko fluttered about wildly as her tiny pink tongue cleaned her fangs of the bright red blood that covered them. 'This... This incredible flavor... It's so... powerful and filling... yet...'  
She shook her head momentarily to clear it, but the taste still lingered as she felt new strength pour into her body. Not her bat body, of course, but rather her spiritual force which tied the two forms together.  
'I have to get away... but... but he tastes so good...' she stared down longingly at the human below as Ranma started hurling roof tiles into the advancing bats, detonating them in mid-air.  
'Wait. Why DOES he taste so good?' She wondered suddenly. It wasn't a special blood type, or anything. Rather, it was as if his blood was packed with much more life energy than the average human... and there was something else, besides, in the aftertaste.  
'No. He's too resourceful, too powerful, and properly armed. Escape while you can!' She started to fly away, but it wasn't long before her flight path became uncertain and wobbly. 'But it tastes SO good!'  
"Ranma-kun! What's going on?"  
Kimiko turned in mid-air, and a vein popped up on her tiny head as she glared at the blond cyborg rising up out of the alley, holding snacks in her arms even as the jets on her back propelled her upward.  
'They know each other. Of COURSE they know each other. This is getting more ridiculous by the moment.'  
"Usagi-chan!" Ranma called as he blew up another two explosive bats with ceiling tiles, "Could you kill that bat flying up there behind me?"  
Usagi looked up at the single bat floating in the sky, then looked at the three remaining bats glowing blue and chasing after Ranma.  
She shrugged. "Okay." _Vwwwr! Rrrrrngh!_  
Both of Usagi's shoulderblades opened outward as articulated arms unfolded behind her. At the end of each was some sort of spherical device with a pointed rod at the end composed of magnifiers and a thick red lens at the junction.  
'This can't be good,' Kimiko decided, arcing away. 'But the blood!' she thought, arcing back.  
_BWEEEOOOM!_ The bat zipped backward desperately as a bright red laser beam nearly bisected it. 'Okay! Screw the blood! I have to get out of here! I don't think I can take both of them at once!'  
_BWEEEOOOM!_ The second laser neatly sliced through the bat's left wing, and the magical creature plummeted down onto an adjacent room, landing in a burst of wood and ceiling tiles that seemed quite unusual given the creature's apparent weight.

"Gah! DIE, you stupid bat bomb thing!" Ranma jumped back as the final glowing bat dove for him again, and gathered a small spark of ki energy into his hand. "Leave me alone! Hah!" He tossed the tiny ki bolt, which slammed right into the final bat projectile.  
Ranma blinked and watched in fascination as the bat didn't detonate, like the others did when he threw tiles at them, but rather fizzled away, its glow fading before its body crumbled into nothing before his eyes.  
"Whoa. That was weird," he mumbled. Turning around, he noticed that Usagi was landing a few roofs away, staring at a big hole as she munched on a corn dog.  
He quickly made his way over to her, and glanced down the hole she was staring at. "Did you get the bat?"  
Usagi nodded happily, her mouth stuffed full. "Yeth! I thot ih thowhn, uhn ih feh doh heah!"  
Ranma nodded seriously, having understood every word (when he was growing up, Genma often went on long rants when he either had his mouth full or was dead drunk, so he had plenty of practice with such things). "Well, I can't sense her anywhere nearby. How about you?"  
_Vrrt!_ Usagi's sensor fins popped up and twitched slightly before she shook her head. "Nuhp! Ah canth thenth heh eiheh! Hooh wath thah?"  
Ranma shrugged. "Aw, just some vampire. Too bad she got away, though... oh well, we should probably be getting back by now..."  
Usagi nodded, swallowing the food in her mouth. "Yeah! Snake-san and the others should be done by now, right?"  
"Yeah, probably." Ranma stopped for a moment to rub the back of his neck tenderly, then crouched down and jumped down to the streets, landing without a sound.  
Usagi followed a moment later in a slightly less graceful manner. _CRACK!_  
Ranma winced at the small impact crater Usagi left as the cyborg got up unsteadily. "Uh... yeah... in the future, you should probably use those jets to slow your fall, okay?"  
"Oops! Sorry!" Usagi said, sticking her tongue out and knocking herself on the head.  
"No big deal. Let's get you back home."  
"Okay! I can't wait to see Snake-san again! I wonder what their plan was to keep me enrolled in school..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snake looked over at Kyle. "Ready?"  
Kyle nodded from where he was standing over a brunette girl who was gagged and bound to a wooden chair.  
Junko nodded from where she stood at the door, listening carefully for any intruders.  
"Mmmmnph! Hmm!" The terrified girl struggled a bit against her bonds, but was ignored.  
Snake smirked under his mask as he picked up the phone from the oversized tracking scrambler and started dialing.  
_Brrrring! Brrrring! Click! Hello, this is the Kishimata residence. Who am I speaking to?_  
"That's not important, Kishimata-san," Snake said. "This IS dean Najoma Kishimata, correct?"  
_Correct... who is this? I'm very busy, and-_  
"And I'm sure this is important enough to warrant your attention, Kishimata-san," Snake interrupted. "Tell me, do you know where your child is right now?"  
_... Wh-What is this? What's going on?_  
"I can assure you, our intentions are benevolent and our demands are reasonable," the American said, wrapping his finger up in the phone cord casually. "There will be no monetary requests, nor will we require anything embarrassing or harmful of you. But your complete cooperation WILL be necessary. There could be... complications otherwise."  
_Damn you! What have you done with my son?_  
Snake blinked. Twice.  
Then he turned around and took a hard look at the young woman tied up in the chair.  
"Oh. Uh... not that child. The other one."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What are you babbling about?" Najoma said angrily, sweat pouring down his brow. "What have you done with Renji?"  
"What has who done with me, Dad?" the aforementioned boy said, poking his head into the room.  
The dean gaped. "Renji! You're... You're all right!"  
The boy nodded. "Yeah, sure. The game ran a little late, but we won! I'm gonna take a shower now, okay?"  
Najoma watched his son go up the stairs wordlessly, then glared at the phone in disgust before hanging up. "What a disgusting prank to pull... damn drunk college brats."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snake frowned deeply as the line went dead. "This isn't going as I had envisioned it."  
Then he walked over to their captive, his hands planted on his hips. "All right you, what's the deal? The dean doesn't have any daughters." He reached up and pulled the gag down.  
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She started crying immediately. "I was just trying to get out of a parking ticket! I'm not really the dean's daughter! It was a lie! Please don't kill me!"  
Snake sweatdropped. "Well, crap... does YOUR dad do anything important for the school, or at least have a lot of money?"  
"No! He's a fisherman! I got into this school on a scholarship! Please don't hurt me! You can have my purse and everything in it! Even my iPhone! You can sell those on eBay for like-"  
"Shut up," Snake said sharply, rubbing his temples. "Blondie, knock her out, would you? I have to make another phone call."  
Kyle nodded, and took out a cloth before holding it over the girl's mouth and nose.  
_Brrrring! Brrrring! Brrrring! Click! Hello?_  
"Hey, it's my favorite cyborg! It's you-know-who! How's your night coming along? Having fun?"  
_Oh, hi! Yeah, it's been all right, though there was this vampire or something a little bit earlier._  
"Vampire? Wow, that's interesting!" Snake said as he rubbed the back of his head. "Sooooo... now that you're out of school for good, you'll probably be looking for a job, huh?"  
_Huh? What do you mean?_  
"How would you like to become a police officer of the D-" Snake trailed off as he realized that the girl behind him was not unconscious, but was in fact struggling mightily against the genetically enhanced blonde. "Just a sec." He put the phone down. "Blondie, we're trying to knock her out, not suffocate her. You dip the rag in chloroform, THEN you put it over her mouth."  
"Ohhh... I was wondering why it wasn't working," Kyle mumbled, pulling the rag away to add the proper substance.  
Snake picked up the receiver again. "So, anyway, how would you like to be an intrepid enforcer of the peace? A champion of-" _Clack!_ "-huh? Hello? You there?"  
Ranma's voice came from the receiver a moment later, though it was obvious he wasn't speaking directly into the cell phone. _Hey! Usagi-chan, wait! Where're you going? You dropped your phone! Hey! What's wrong, why are you crying all of a sudden?_  
_Click!_  
Junko slowly walked up next to Snake, and tenderly put a hand onto his shoulder. "So... to the bar?"  
Snake placed the receiver back on the telephone and the machine attached to it. "... No, I think this is more of a 'stay at home and drink yourself into a stupor' kind of night."  
The redhead nodded. "Need some company? 'Cause we should all probably spend a few days lying low, just in case-"  
_Thud!_ "Zzzzzzzz..."  
Junko turned her head at the noise and then sighed. "Blondie drank the chloroform."  
Snake groaned. "This is what I get for making a plan that doesn't involve explosives... man..."

Vampires dusted: 69  
Innocent humans slaughtered: 61  
Cyborgs dropped in the assault: 5 (1 + 4 buried in rubble from the collapsed building)  
Terrorists killed for pretext purposes: 2  
Vampires captured: 14

End Chapter 


	8. Premonitions

Black Dragon Productions presents...

A Guardian sequel/spinoff...

Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover... 

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.

Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.

Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.

Other Notes: _Sounds_, techniques or emphasis, 'thoughts', (side comments) writing, computer readouts 

Millennium  
Chapter 8  
Premonitions

"This is just getting ridiculous," Sailor Pluto mumbled as she leaned weakly on the staff of time, massaging her head.

Ironically, the guardian of time had completely lost track of how long she had been trying to locate and eliminate the strange pulses of disruptive temporal energy; in the swirl of power that filled her as she bent time and space in her search, an hour felt no different than a day, and in a search as difficult as hers, either one could prove equally productive.

She had gotten lucky, however, and found a lead on the device that was probably causing the disturbances; a machine called the "chronosphere". Evidently, if the scientists that had been studying the wreckage of the device two months ago were correct, the machine wasn't a time machine at all as she'd originally feared, but rather a temporal teleportation device that had been built for the obvious tactical applications of teleporting soldiers into vulnerable and strategically important positions at will.

It also seemed that this technology had somehow fallen into the hands of the Freedom's Angels.

Pluto snorted. The short-sighted terrorists were the very worst examples of humanity's shortcomings: selfish, hateful murderers with no sense of civility or discipline, who used their twisted ideals as an excuse for their atrocities.

Oh, sure, the fools had their uses. More than one lab investigating Dark Kingdom and Silver Millennium artifacts had suffered crippling attacks by the terrorists in their mad lust for weapons technology, and they kept the defense forces so busy and disorganized that the nation could never manage to come up with a truly effective response to the Dark Kingdom invasions on their own. And the response Japan DID come up with, the DAPC, was both wonderfully myopic in their scope of operations and brutally efficient in their execution. Numerous lesser threats had been wiped out by the department, and yet even when the officers actually arrested the Senshi, they released the girls after a generous donation and a little paperwork without any further scrutiny. To this day, the Senshi remained the beloved heroes of Japan while the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment was regarded as a reckless plague that freely destroyed Tokyo on the taxpayer's dollar.

All was as it should be.

At least, it was if you put aside this "chronosphere" nonsense, anyway. The device was far too advanced to be entrusted to the ignorant people of Earth - much less the violent rogues of that population - and its technologies could be too easily modified to allow for time travel. Naturally, it was HER job to prevent that.

Sailor Pluto frowned. There was something else about her extended search that troubled her. It wasn't anything so blatant as the tremendous pulses of energies or the minor tears in the fabric of space and time, but it kept tugging at her instincts; far too many seemingly benign events had taken place that shouldn't have.

That was it, really. Looking into the future was looking into a billion different possibilities all strung together haphazardly to create a coherent picture. Though there were literally an infinite number of possible futures whenever one looked through the Gates of Time, it was programmed to crystallize only the most probable into a collection of "likely" futures that had any real chance of occurring.

Lately, however, in her search for the strange temporal disturbance, she'd noticed that there were an awful lot of extremely improbable things happening. This wasn't any problem or cause for concern, normally; after all, none of the strange occurrences that she'd noted affected her or the Senshi in any way that she could see. However, there was just something... WRONG about these particular incidences. Besides the fact that they weren't supposed to have happened, anyway.

There were bizarre accidents. People dying in grisly ways. Blood splattering in unusual, cryptic patterns. And then there was the opposite. People surviving who should have died in perfectly ordinary, mundane ways.

If there was anything obvious about the string of improbabilities that should have concerned Pluto, that was probably it: they all seemed to involve the miraculous survival of someone who should have died, or the bloody death of someone who shouldn't have, all by freak chance. A young nun's future murderer dies because of a dog falling into an inexplicable fit of temper and chasing him into traffic. A few days later, the preacher running the very same church that the nun attended was inspecting the bell tower and was somehow struck by a passing bird with enough force to send him plummeting to the chapel roof... to be impaled on the spire above the church entrance. Needless to say, the incidences had numerous ramifications, each one of them meaningless to her: the church was closed after the accident until everything could be sorted out, and the nun had seemed to become catatonic from the experience.

It was almost as if these perversions of chance were... fighting back. Violently. Could there be some intent or reasoning behind this? It didn't seem possible, but the whole affair troubled her greatly.

Sailor Pluto sighed as she continued to ponder the problems at hand. She had been struggling for quite some time to locate the chronosphere, but now that she had found it, honestly, destroying the device and all traces of the technology used to build it was not a terribly pressing concern. The strange improbabilities were probably nothing, and would be very difficult to look into, but had the potential to be EXTREMELY serious. If someone was tampering with fate under her radar, that entity had to be at least as powerful as she, and possessed of artifacts that threatened the future of Crystal Tokyo by their mere existence.

Of course, there was one OTHER important job she had to do that was being somewhat neglected, but she didn't really think she had to check up on the Senshi again to make sure no Earth-shaking changes had taken place and that they were staying out of trouble. Things were going well enough several days ago, and she would have noticed if any Dark Kingdom threats had emerged since she'd left them to their own devices. How much could possibly happen to them in a week?

Pluto made up her mind quickly; she'd give the strange accidents a brief look to check for anything suspicious, and then destroy the chronosphere. Because the device was in the hands of mundane humans, she would probably use an opposing faction to engage them - either the DAPC or the JDF proper - and then slip in when things were convenient and ensure that nothing useful survived the devastation.

But that was for later. For now...

Stretching out her hand, Sailor Pluto willed the gates back to the nun that had inexplicably survived and began checking on the threads of fate that surrounded her.

The most obvious, blatantly likely destinies were all perfectly fine, mundane, and seemingly untouched. They mostly centered around a momentous decision in which the horrible accident that had befallen her mentor in the church either convinced her that dark forces were working against Catholicism and bolstered her faith, or caused her to decide that no caring, relevant God existed and leave the church.

Either one led to a perfectly nice, boring life that had absolutely no effect upon the ultimate fate of whether or not the entire world was nearly destroyed and then purified to become a utopia. If she stayed with the church, she became an idol among the faithful, and soon became a priest herself (as Pope Robot Snake would decree in a year that it would be best to have some female church leaders so that the altar boys would at least have some options). If she didn't, she'd go to college, and then get engaged to a nice young man right before they were both killed in the cataclysm to come. Sad, but irrelevant.

Pluto nodded. Those were the most likely outcomes for this divergence point. Now for the most unlikely ones.

This was rather tricky, especially when the guardian of time didn't know what she was looking for, if anything; there were an awful lot of things that were nearly, but not quite, impossible that could happen to the poor nun at this juncture. The more likely of the unlikely were the decisions to turn over to a Satanic cult or something or commit suicide. Then there were threads that had her becoming a talk show circuit sensation, and then an actor. Or the one where she sought to return her pastor to life using a not-quite-fabled retrovirus.

Pluto winced. THAT one might affect Crystal Tokyo. Severely. But as the chance of her happening upon that information, and then deciding to go through with it, and THEN successfully acquiring the virus and messing up without someone stopping her was an infinitesmally small percentage of a possibility, she felt safe it would not occur so long as elements beyond the mortal scope kept their hands off of the forces of chance.

Sailor Pluto decided to give up, for now. She couldn't sense anything unusual about any of the possibilities to indicate that destiny was being tampered with. She'd try a few more "scans" of a few other individuals after the chronosphere was dealt with.

"... Wait... Wait just a minute," she mumbled to herself as an image surfaced in her mind. For some reason, the sight of that nun kneeling before a Satanic rune bothered her, and not for the obvious reasons.

Quickly holding out the Garnet Rod, the image before the gates of time shifted back to show the consequences of the nun's unlikely choice to take up Satanism.

'Scratch that. That's not a Satanic symbol... well, I don't THINK it is...' Pluto frowned as she stared at the emblem haphazardly bolted over a Catholic cross. Religious symbols were hardly something that she invested much research into, but this one bothered her. It really could have been Satanic, for all she knew; the only symbol she knew of that was used in Satanic rituals was the pentagram, and any fanatic nutty enough to join a Satanic cult would certainly possess the creativity to make up their own ridiculous symbols.

'An eight-spoked wheel, with the "spokes" drawn further than the circumference of the wheel, with each spoke ending in an arrow... why do I feel like I should know that symbol?' She briefly debated listening in on the nun's ceremony to get a better idea of what she was doing, but decided to simply follow the thread of possibility to see its results; she wanted to get this over with quickly so she could put an end to her recent headaches, and had no time to listen to some cultist's moronic ranting.

Gesturing gently with her staff, she sped time forward... and then raised an eyebrow.

Now THIS was suspicious. Everything past that initiation ceremony seemed to be beyond the sight of the Gates of Time. Blurry images cloaked with murky darkness appeared, the people and places of the future reduced to hopelessly vague shapes.

This was probably what she was looking for; it took a rather powerful entity to foil Pluto's surveillance, and with few exceptions, those entities never did so without cause.

"The recent string of events were not accidents. Something is manipulating fate," she said decisively, frowning. She didn't know what end this entity hoped to accomplish in its ministrations, but it didn't matter. Nothing could be allowed to tamper with the flow of destiny and endanger what was to come to pass!

_Oh! Look! There she is!_

Pluto's head snapped up, and her eyes widened even as her face remained frozen otherwise.

_She seems a bit surprised. They always do when they get caught. Naughty voyeur!_

Sailor Pluto could only stare. The dark, shadowy clouds of that young nun's destiny had parted slightly... to reveal the nun herself, staring up at Pluto as if they were separated by a simple window.

The girl had changed, obviously. Her eyes were hard and determined. She still wore her habit, oddly enough, but it had a lot of rough stitching on it now and had streaks of fresh blood on it. An amulet hung around her neck, bearing the same symbol that she had knelt before when she had chosen this dark path, and glowing slightly as the girl stared up at the guardian of time.

_What are you so surprised for, fool? How long did you really think you could harness fate before fate got sick of your leash?_

Pluto continued to say nothing. Partially because she couldn't think of a damn thing to say, and partially because she didn't want to give anything away. She had spent centuries mastering the "infallible, all-knowing seer of destiny" look, and she'd be damned if some upstart witch was going to spoil it all just by doing the impossible and shocking the hell out of her.

The girl waited for a moment, looking nonplussed at Sailor Pluto's silence. _Feh. Lousy conversationalist. No wonder they shipped you off to some non-planet at the edge of the solar system._ Then she took a deep, calming breath as she caressed the amulet hanging from her neck. _Changer of Ways, your servant seeks your judgment upon a lowly interloper! This shrew freely dabbles in powers within your domain without proper toll or tariff! By the power of Tzeentch, let her debt be paid!_

THAT got more than a wide-eyed stare from Pluto. "Tzeentch? But... no. No! That's impossible! It can't-"

A sudden flare of light engulfed the Gates of Time, and Pluto was able to make out a brief, lingering image of a stylized flame within the gates before it started glowing.

Not a good kind of glowing, either. No, the Gates were currently glowing several colors, as if the entire thing had been wrapped in a rainbow. The guardian of time had been at this station long enough to know that they were NOT supposed to do that.

Still, that seemed rather insignificant once she saw a gnarled, misshapen hand reach out of the gates, grasping for her.

"By Serenity! NOOOOOO!!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Usagi sighed wearily as she twisted her hands in her lap.

"But it didn't work. After all that, they couldn't get me back into school. Now I've been kicked out, and... well..."

Sitting on the floor of Rei's bedroom, a rather distressed Luna was rubbing her forehead wearily, either in imitation of human frustration, or in some vain hope that if she rubbed hard enough at the moon emblem on her head she could become a normal pet and get away with making a few animal noises instead of providing counsel.

"Usagi, WHY didn't you tell me about this earlier? It was a mistake to trust those foolish policemen!" The moon cat chided.

"It's not their fault," Usagi insisted firmly for the fourth time in the past hour, "and I really wish people would stop blaming them! This was my problem to begin with, and they tried to help me just because they could! Sure, they completely messed up. But I'm not any worse off now than if I hadn't taken their help!"

"Oh? What if that injured soccer player sues?" Rei asked as she entered the room, carrying a bowl of pretzels.

Usagi winced. "Uh... well... Ami-chan said that the school would probably be more liable, or whatever... I'm sure it'll be fine."

"There! You see? That attitude right there. That's what bothers me about this," the raven-haired woman said as she sat down on her bed next to her princess. "What makes you so sure it'll be fine? These people are maniacs, Usagi-chan. First they arrested us, then they nearly blew you up, then they assigned someone to spy on you around-the-clock, then they dragged you along on a vampire hunt, then they made you help fight off a retaliatory attack, then they tutored you so that you somehow did WORSE than usual on your tests, and FINALLY, they make a bogus promise about taking care of the school problem and totally blow it. You have the utmost faith in these idiots, and I can't figure out why!"

"You're not being fair at all!" Usagi accused, quickly stuffing some pretzels in her mouth before continuing. "What about all the good stuff they did? They saved us from the robots AND from that cyborg guy! And I wasn't forced to help against the vampires, I volunteered! Why shouldn't I, when they're trying to help me all the time?"

"All right, all right, shut up you two!" Luna shouted suddenly, her tail twitching in annoyance. "I suppose that in the long run, these police officers solve more problems than they create, but it doesn't matter." She jabbed a paw at the blonde. "Those people are NOT to be trusted! Their loyalty does not belong to us, Serenity, or the Moon Kingdom! It belongs to several corrupt politicians whose only concern is obtaining their next paycheck! Regardless of whether the officers of the department are idiots or heroes, that alone is enough to distance ourselves from them!"

Rei frowned. "Say... while we're on the topic, where's Saotome-san? I know he came in with you."

Usagi frowned as well while scratching her cheek. "Well, it's weird; he followed me in through the front door, but then the moment we stepped into the kitchen and saw you, he said he'd patrol outside and ran out like there was something chasing him." Her eyes narrowed. "I think **you** scared him off."

Rei recoiled slightly. "What? ME? What did I do?"

"Well, gee, I don't know, maybe he doesn't like you or something?" the cyborg deadpanned, crossing her arms over her chest. "I have no idea why; I mean, it's not like you take every opportunity to call him and his co-workers psychotic idiots when they're constantly risking their lives to keep innocent people safe from robots and monsters."

"Well... not right in front of him, I don't!" Rei countered, flushing slightly.

"Oh. Right. So maybe it was when you almost got him killed in that night club?"

"Hey! I apologized for that!"

"Girls! GIRLS! SHUT UP!" Luna hissed. "Whatever reasons Saotome-san has for keeping to himself is irrelevant; Usagi, you shouldn't have let him follow you here in the first place!"

"But he's my bodyguard!" The blonde protested. "And it's not like we're talking about anything he doesn't know about, anyway."

"True. But he doesn't know about ME," Luna snapped.

Usagi blinked. "... So? Why does that matter?"

A vein popped up on Luna's head. "Every secret we can keep from prying eyes is important! Like I said, these people can't be trusted!"

"I don't think it's that much of a problem, actually," Rei said reluctantly. "He asks the occasional question, but Saotome-san isn't too nosy at all. If he's acting as a spy, he's pretty lousy at it."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ranma frowned from where he was hiding underneath the window, clinging to the outside wall. 'Really? I'm a lousy spy? Huh.'

He wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. He didn't really WANT to be good at sneaking around and prying into other people's business, but his natural tendency was to be offended whenever someone suggested he was bad at anything.

He shrugged and decided to discard the little tidbit. He could always learn more about spying if he felt challenged enough to take up the craft and prove himself.

"It doesn't matter what their 'mission' is, Usagi! They don't answer to us, so we don't work with them!"

Ranma felt another chill crawl down his back as he heard that... that... that THING talking again. He had fled the kitchen the moment he had seen a pet bowl, judging that Rei's apartment was too small to keep a dog in, and then briefly glimpsed the terrible beast through the window before he had abandoned his first position for a much safer one out of sight of Rei's bedroom. And with a nice, open line of retreat where he wouldn't have to stop running or smash through anything for a good two kilometers. Not that he was scared or anything.

"Yes, they do! You're already in a position where everything you do can be judged and penalized by this 'DAPC'! It's unacceptable! You're not a government dog, you're the future ruler of Crystal Tokyo!"

Ranma quickly checked his gun to make sure it was loaded. For the seventh time. Not that he expected mere bullets to stop a talking mutant undead cyborg cat, or whatever ridiculous monstrosity Usagi was currently conversing with. The entire building would probably have to be demolished on top of it, set on fire, and then cleansed with high-yield explosives. And then buried, just for good measure.

"Your status in regards to the Silver Millennium is more important than your citizenship of this country!"

Once again Usagi said something in response, though Ranma wasn't quite able to make it out; while the demon/mutant/kitty was shouting so that anyone standing outside could hear, Usagi's voice was much weaker, and the monster was dominating the conversation.

"I'm through arguing about this! You are to sever all ties to this department at once! If they want to stumble onto the scene of a battle and help out, fine, but we cannot have them following us around! Send that 'bodyguard' back where he came from! And I'll speak to Pluto as soon as possible about having their memories erased; I have no idea why she would allow them knowledge of your secret identities, much less just hand it to them, but if I can't talk her out of it maybe I can at least pry a good explanation out of her."

Ranma scratched his chin thoughtfully. Obviously the little black freak of nature was evil, but it didn't seem to be the obvious kind of evil that stomped around eating people, so it was probably just outside of the DAPC's jurisdiction as of the moment. Also, Usagi seemed to like it and apparently even took orders from it, so she'd probably get upset if he had Rei's apartment complex razed in order to kill it, to say nothing of what Rei herself would think.

'Well played, "Luna"... I'll let you live. For now.'

"It doesn't matter! You have NINE bodyguards, including Tuxedo Kamen! One man with a gun isn't going to make any difference! Get rid of him!"

As for what the monster cat was saying, well, aside from the memory wipe thing - which Ranma scoffed at - it didn't really bother him much or change his current job. It would be more annoying if he had to trail Usagi without her knowing, but it would be a good way to train himself in this "spying" thing he apparently wasn't very good at.

Noting that the voices above had stopped, Ranma gently hopped down to the ground and awaited Usagi's exit from the building.

When the blonde cyborg did come out, she smiled weakly at Ranma and then halted, as if debating whether or not she should approach.

Eventually she steeled herself and walked toward him, maintaining eye contact awkwardly.

"R-Ranma... uh... hi," she tried valiantly, floundering immediately.

"You all finished here?" Ranma asked casually.

Usagi sighed and nodded. "Yeah... there isn't anything else to say."

Ranma smiled. "Wanna go eat?"

"YES," the blonde said immediately, shoving the entire conversation with Luna to the back of her mind. Smiling brightly, she started walking down the street as her sensor fins popped up on her head, scanning for the nearest restaurants. Ranma followed.

As she watched from the doorway, Rei slapped a hand over her face in exasperation. "That girl really is hopeless. I'd better go too." Sighing, she closed and locked the door quickly before dashing after the fools.

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Nal'Shek nodded as his fingers twitched gently in the air, pointing toward one of the empty food crates that floated in mid-air a few feet away.

"-so that is essentially what the Force is. Scientifically it's an energy pattern that forms the very framework of this universe; a chaotic web of subtle energies hiding within chunks of crude matter. However, to our kind, it is something more. It is a source of strength beyond the myopic understandings of science. The Force speaks to us, resonates with us; it is the center of our existence and our reason for being."

Hotaru panted heavily from where she had been doing push-ups as her new teacher requested, and eventually summoned the strength to nod before she grunted and tried to lift herself up again. She was really starting to resent Nal'Shek's request that she revert back from her Senshi form for the training so that her natural body would benefit fully from his exercises, but she kept her peace with little effort.

She never once thought to ask how the spectre knew that she had a civilian form, much less it's name and nature in relation to her Senshi form. She had told him a lot about the Moon Kingdom in the distant past, but never anything from which he could infer her being a relatively normal human being temporarily powered-up by the powers she'd described. Yet the detail completely slipped her mind.

"Of course, in my current state - dead, that is - this is about all I can manage. One's grip on the Force weakens considerably with the loss of a physical vessel through which to funnel the energies." He turned his wispy, translucent hand over, and the crate fell back to Earth in the unchallenged grip of gravity. Then the phantom glanced at his apprentice and sighed. "All right Hotaru, that's enough for now. You can stop. Though in the future, You should aspire to more than seven push-ups before you collapse in exhaustion like that."

Hotaru glanced up at the ancient master in annoyance. "Why do I have to do this at all? What do push-ups have to do with commanding powerful ancient magic, anyway? I can already do that, and all I have to do is wave a stick around and shout."

"The Force is not mere magic. At least, not as you understand it. Both the body and mind must be strong, in order to work in perfect concert with the Force." Then he cocked his semi-transparent head to the side. "You have a point, though: you already have enough power, don't you?"

Hotaru blinked as she sat up, and then lowered her head, frowning. "More than I know what to do with, really."

"Well, that's precisely it," the spectre said smugly. "There is much the Force has to offer. Raw power IS one of the more popular advantages, I must admit, but it is one of many."

Hotaru slowly raised her head to the spirit, obviously intrigued.

"With a deep understanding and connection to the Force, all things are ultimately possible. I stand before you as living proof, having challenged and defeated the boundary between life and death." Nal'Shek smirked wryly. "Well, partially, anyway."

Hotaru looked somewhat interested, but still skeptical. "Okay... so all things are possible... if you have enough power and knowledge. So I could control my powers more easily, and use them without harming myself? Or... Or maybe I could strengthen my body more, so I'm not so weak when I'm not in Senshi form?"

Nal'Shek rolled his eyes. "Well, of course. But I suspect you're thinking a bit too... **big**. From what you tell me, you have little need of combat power. Even glimpsing the future, if I recall correctly, is of limited use to you." He floated closer to Hotaru, leaning forward toward her ear as the girl stared at him curiously. "Power isn't what you want. You have... other desires. Through the Force, ANYTHING you want is within your grasp. All you need to do is **take it**."

Hotaru shivered as one by one, images came unbidden to her mind. Nal'Shek was right; she didn't want combat power or the ability to push things with her mind. She'd always wanted more mundane things: health, acceptance, friends... love...

Her face flushed as she considered a certain pigtailed policeman she had grown rather close to over the past month; she had given up on the idea of a relationship with Ranma, but that didn't mean that the attraction had faded in the least. Was it possible? Would mastering the Force really help her in something as petty as romance? The idea of training in the use of mystical, eldritch powers to help her social life seemed stupid, but the possibilities haunted her.

"Okay, fine, I get it," Hotaru said somewhat gruffly, trying to hide her embarrassment as she stood up. "Learning this Force stuff certainly couldn't hurt, right?" Then she frowned. "But... one thing's still bothering me..." actually, there were a few things bothering her, but for some reason it was difficult to think about most them; whenever she tried to focus the thoughts would vanish, as if she was trying to grasp hold of a soap bubble.

"Yes? You can ask me anything," the spirit confided.

"Why are you training me, exactly?" Hotaru asked. "I'm just a random girl who showed up on your doorstep by accident and broke into your home. And I don't even need your training to do anything important."

"Yes, why indeed," Nal'Shek said drolly, "after all, I'm SO busy floating about talking to myself to better retain my language skills, it's a wonder I can find the time."

"Right, right," the purple-haired girl mumbled. "But... why me? Like you said, I don't need the power; why not teach someone else these skills?"

"Force-sensitive individuals aren't so common that you can just start training any old klutz that happens to tumble into your ancient subterranean fortress," Nal'Shek deadpanned. "A certain level of biological intellect is required for a mind to properly grasp the Force; a level that the humans of this planet have only recently obtained. Even then, only one in a million is Force-sensitive enough to **possibly** learn to utilize these powers."

He sighed, which seemed rather strange coming from a ghost. "When I left my home, I was relentlessly pursued by my oppressors, and my craft was badly damaged before it made the jump to hyperspace. I spent YEARS in that bleak, twilight realm, unable to restore function to the key systems of my ship to revert back to realspace. Until one day, by sheer, freak chance, my path brought me close enough to an astral body for the gravity well to forcibly pull my craft back into normal space." He chuckled ruefully. "My relief was short-lived, as that same gravity immediately brought me crashing down to the planet, demolishing my ship even further."

Then the spirit's expression twisted into a grimace. "I wasn't much better off on the planet than I was trapped in hyperspace. This planet was a primitive world, rich with resources and life, but untouched by civilization. The 'humans' were brutal, disorganized tribesman who had barely begun to cook up a proper spoken language. Weakened considerably from my trials, I barely had the strength to fend them off, much less conquer their tribes in order to create a useful society from which I could get supplies. And training the dirty primals in the ways of the Force was out of the question, of course. I knew my time was short." He gestured to the walls around him. "In my final years I fled underground with all the technology I could salvage and replicate, and a small band of primitives that had seen my powers and were convinced I was divinity. I constructed this lair and prepared for my death, but in a last, brilliant surge of self-preservation, conducted some fervent research on ways I might preserve myself, so that I might pass on the ways of the Force to the humans of this world once they had properly evolved. I imagine that I was long dead and waiting patiently underground during the entire rise and fall of this 'Moon Kingdom' you told me of. A pity, but that's how it goes."

He turned toward Hotaru, smiling. "But now, here I am. Standing before me is the finest potential Force-user I have seen in all my years, alive or dead. Once I pass on my knowledge to you, the circle will be complete, and at last, my spirit can rest."

Hotaru blinked repeatedly, a bit overwhelmed. "Oh... uh... are you... are you SURE that I have that potential? You said that power in the Force needs a strong body and mind, but my body has always been so weak..."

"This is true, to a point," the phantom hedged. "Any real power or understanding in the Force must be obtained through the proper training methods. However, students of exceptional potential often have that potential manifest unexpectedly as they mature. Sometimes they show an uncanny influence over others, or they can glimpse into the future. As for you... well, you said you were a healer, correct?"

Hotaru nodded hesitantly. "Well, yes, but that comes from being the Senshi of Saturn..." then she frowned. "Doesn't it?"

Nal'Shek shook his head. "The power of Saturn is one that can only destroy, my apprentice. And although destruction is an essential force in the universe, it is not the most flexible one. Although this... 'magic shell' that you don from time to time may focus your simmering Force sensitivities, your ability to mend wounds is a more natural skill than that. The Force is strong in you; you are merely unskilled in its use." He smiled kindly at her, and held out his wispy, semi-transparent hand. "With your permission, and a bit of time, I would like to change that."

The teenage girl stared at his hand thoughtfully, searching her mind for something, anything, to cast doubt to his words and justify the nagging unease that she felt deep within her heart.

Finding nothing, she smiled back. "All right... Nal-sensei." With that she took hold of his hand.

Or tried to, anyway. Stumbling a bit from surprise as her hand went right through him, she quickly stood up straight and sweatdropped. "Oh. Right. Ghost. I forgot."

The spectre rolled his eyes, and then floated a few feet higher off the ground. "So. Are you ready to continue?"

Hotaru was about to nod emphatically, but then she stopped thoughtfully. "Actually... I have one more question... if these Force-users were so powerful and rare, did they have a special name?"

Nal'Shek remained unusually neutral as he raised an eyebrow. "... Yes. They did indeed. Tell me, my apprentice; have you ever heard of the Sith?"

Hotaru shook her head.

The phantom couldn't help his lip quirking slightly into a smile as he continued. "Ah... it is a title you will enjoy soon enough. But before that: training. Come with me..."

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"Oh, wow! This is great!" Usagi chirped between mouthfuls of soba noodles. "Rei-chan, you have to try some! They just melt in your mouth!"

Rei briefly glanced over at Usagi to roll her eyes in annoyance before turning back to watch Ranma, who was in the corner of the restaurant several meters away arguing with the store manager. 

"What do you mean, 'no discount'? I'm a cop! You give cops discounts, don't you?" The pigtailed man groused.

The man was firm in his reluctance to give Ranma a damn thing. "You sir, are not a proper police officer, which is why you are not eligible for a discount. We do not give discounts to military personnel."

Ranma crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, why the heck not?"

"BECAUSE, sir, the police officers protect and maintain the peace in our communities. Men of your ilk are paid equal salaries to destroy it, and this restaurant will not subsidize that behavior."

Ranma's hands clenched into fists briefly, and then unclenched. "We do TOO protect the peace! Don't you read the papers?"

"I do, sir. Though there have been no zombie infestations or mutant attacks that **I've** seen."

"And why do you think that is, huh?" Ranma asked pointedly, jabbing a thumb at himself.

The manager merely shook his head. "I apologize for your dissatisfaction, sir, but if you're not happy enough with us that you're willing to pay full price, I can direct you to several other restaurants with policies that may be more lenient.

"But they gave us a discount the last time I was here!" Ranma tried, trying the last tactic he had for winning the argument.

The manager twitched. "Yes. Yes, you did. That... American was with you then, wasn't he?"

Ranma was silent for several moments. "Oh," he said in a small voice. "You know, I'm awfully hungry. Maybe I should just go sit down and eat."

"Very good, sir. Enjoy your meal," the manager said through clenched teeth.

Rei shook her head sadly as he watched Ranma break off from the argument, sulking. "They shouldn't be surprised that they can't get any respect anywhere. No matter how much good they actually do, they have a reputation." She turned back to Usagi, prepared to brief her on telling Ranma off and cutting her ties with the DAPC as Luna demanded.

Instead, her glass slipped out of her fingers as her mouth moved wordlessly in shock; one of Usagi's articulated arms was reaching out of its shoulder bay, grabbing for a dinner roll.

"USAGI!" Rei hissed, trying very hard to keep from shouting outright. "What do you think you're doing?"

The cyborg in question looked up from where she was attacking the last remnants of her first course. "Hmm? What's wrong? There's plenty of bread Rei-chan, I'm not gonna take all of it."

Rei sat silently in her seat for a moment, counting to ten in her head to calm down. Then she raised her hand and pointed toward the mechanical limb.

Usagi stared at her own appendage for a moment, and then her eyes widened in realization. "OH! Oops! Wow, I didn't even notice this time! It just felt completely natural, you know?" She chuckled nervously as the mechanical limb remained outstretched, not moving from where it clutched the bread.

By now Rei had a hand over her eyes, and was mentally congratulating herself for not screaming in frustration. "Usagi-chan. Please. Put it away. Now."

Usagi started to do so, but then stopped and briefly looked around curiously. "You know... maybe it's okay. People don't really seem to mind it." There were a few children staring at her in awe, but for the most part the other patrons seemed to be quite deliberately ignoring her.

"It doesn't matter!" Rei hissed. "If you walk around with stuff like that out in the open, you're going to cause a panic!"

"Eh, I dunno about that," Ranma said as he finally reached the table once again, sitting across from Rei, "people around here are getting real used to weird stuff. Even when I walk Hunter, nowadays only two or three people run away screaming in terror."

"My gods, you people don't have any propriety at all," Rei murmured, massaging her temples. "Saotome-san, do you ever wonder why people hate you and your department so much?"

Ranma froze with his chopsticks hovering over his plate, looking thoughtful. "... Occasionally. But then I look at all the smoking ruins that used to be buildings, blame everything on Snake, and feel much better."

"While Snake-san is a terrible, terrible man," Rei mumbled, "it's not ENTIRELY his fault."

"A whole lot of is, though," Ranma said as he popped a piece of nigiri in his mouth, "and he does attract the most attention."

Usagi looked thoughtful as she plucked the dinner roll out of the grasp of her shoulder-mounted claw. "You know, I've been thinking about that. Does Snake have a girlfriend?"

Ranma snorted immediately at the thought, barely able to keep the food in his mouth long enough to swallow. "No. No, he does not have a girlfriend. Or a lover, or a wife, or anyone who's interested in being any of those things."

The blonde smiled. "Oh, that's not entirely true!"

"Eh?"

Usagi's eyes sparkled as she smiled at Ranma. "I wanna set Snake up with Mina-chan!"

Rei groaned pitifully as Ranma stared blankly at Usagi.

"But... I... I thought you **liked** Minako," he said dumbly.

"Of course I do! And I also like Snake! And more importantly, Mina-chan likes Snake! So we should get them together!" She looked intensely happy at the thought, and Ranma sweatdropped.

"That sounds like a very bad idea to me," the pigtailed man said. "Snake is a dangerous guy. Also, he's kinda... cold toward women," he admitted.

Ranma had observed Junko and her alter-ego, Akina, harassing Snake on several occasions in the past, only to be brushed off with a merciless, irritated coldness very different from his own embarrassed, awkward protests. He didn't really know why Snake would object to a relationship or even casual sex, as the man seemed to revel in other dark activities - most often drinking and killing - but had never thought to ask.

"He just hasn't met the right girl yet," Usagi insisted. "Mina-chan is very pretty and easy to get along with. He'll fall for her if he just gives her a chance." She nodded decisively to herself. "I just really want to see Mina-chan try a real relationship again instead of all these wild flings. It's not that-"

Usagi was interrupted as Rei suddenly put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a leaden stare. "What?"

"Isn't there something you're supposed to tell Saotome-san?" the raven-haired woman said. "Something that PRECLUDES setting Mina-chan up with a psychotic, gun-wielding barbarian?"

Usagi's face darkened immediately. "Oh. Right..." It just wasn't fair; why did she have to lose friends just because they wouldn't take orders from her? While she understood everybody's concerns regarding the officers of the DAPC, they had been there to help her when her world had been turned upside down, completely of their own volition and without any scorn for her "condition". Even though they had threatened to destroy her should she turn evil, they were only looking out for the public interest; why couldn't the others see that? At the end of the day, weren't they all on the same side?

"Something wrong, Usagi-chan?" Ranma asked between bites. He more or less knew what was coming, of course, but in the end, it was Usagi's decision to make, and he wouldn't interfere until after she made it.

The cyborg girl scratched her head nervously as she tried to think of what to say. "Well, it's not... uh... y-yes. I guess... something is wrong. Kinda." She started twiddling her thumbs together as she spoke, and above her head, a second mechanical arm joined the first, and the two latch onto each other before twisting back and forth in imitation of someone wringing her hands. "It's just... you know how you're always trying to help me out, but you keep... that is, things don't turn out... uh... good? Like, at all?"

Ranma looked thoughtful for a moment. "That reminds me: have you given any thought to Snake's offer? I mean, you'll need a day job now that you're out of college, right?" He frowned. "We're really sorry about messing up your tutoring, but at this point a job is all we can really offer you."

"Er... right! About that," Usagi said quickly, wanting to put off Ranma's dismissal a little longer, "I really appreciate all that you've done for me, but I don't really know anything about being a police officer, you know? You guys all went to the academy to learn that, right?"

"Do you know how to beat people up and kill monsters?" Ranma asked drolly. "You were Sailor Moon for a long time, right?"

Usagi blinked. "Well, sure..."

"Well, what do you think WE do all day?"

The blonde cyborg blinked in surprise. "But... the academy-"

"The academy only taught me useless stuff that I never use, or already know. Like people's rights when it comes to searching their homes, or how to kill someone bare-handed."

Rei winced. It didn't take much thought to guess which skill he never used and which skill he already knew, and presumably used often.

"The point is that you already have what it takes to be a cop," Ranma confided, nodding to himself. "All that matters is that you want to help people... and that you have a cyborg body with rocket boosters and a plasma gun. That's what counts."

"Really? I... I mean..." Usagi began flushing again, having no idea how she was supposed to continue now. Snake's offer hadn't sounded that bad once she'd gotten the chance to think about it, and reminded her of the conversation she'd had with Ranma when he caught her blowing up someone's car in frustration. Why not become a police officer? It was a useful, productive, and well-respected job (in most departments, anyway), and she had spent most of her teenage life fighting for justice already. Besides, it wasn't as if she had any other prospects waiting now that she had been booted out of school.

Rei groaned. "You know what? The hell with this. Usagi-chan, why don't you take a break in the restroom? I'll take care of things here."

Usagi looked up uncertainly. "Huh? Really?" While she was all too happy to avoid the awkward responsibility of having to tell Ranma to shove off and take his entire department with him, she didn't really want to leave the task up to Rei, the Senshi with the worst opinion of the department in question. Never mind that Rei was stubborn and temperamental on her best days, and was already on shaky terms with Ranma.

"If I leave it to you, we'll be here all night," the raven-haired woman groused. "You go take a break, and I'll straighten this out, okay?"

Usagi looked at Ranma in concern, but the pigtailed man merely shrugged. "Okay... I guess that's fine..." she got up hesitantly, and then scurried off toward the restrooms, not wanting to see the expected explosion from her fiery-tempered friend. 

"All right, Saotome-san," Rei began, moving her chair back a bit before crossing her arms and legs, "let me spell it out for you: We can't associate with you anymore. We're grateful for the help - and the **attempts** to help - and we totally support your crusade against the darkness and whatnot, but from now on we have to go our separate ways. That means no coordinated attacks, no calling the cops for help if a youma proves a little too tough, and **certainly** no 'bodyguards' for our leader."

"Then we have a problem," Ranma deadpanned, "since I was ordered to keep tabs on Usagi-chan."

"I know. And I would appreciate if you'd help us get that order rescinded. We'll call up your captain if we have to, but you need to talk to whoever you need to talk to and tell them that Usagi-chan doesn't need your protection OR your scrutiny."

Ranma frowned. "That's going to be hard. The lady that appears in my dreams hasn't shown up recently."

Rei blinked. Twice. "Wait, what?"

"Nothing," Ranma mumbled, taking a sip of tea. "So you're in college too, right? What are you studying?"

Rei blinked yet again, confused. "Uh... I'm an anthropology major with a minor in religious studies. Why?"

"Ever had an interest in police work?" Ranma asked casually before taking a sip of tea.

Rei's eyes narrowed. "NO."

"Why not? You already run around searching for evil and injustice and blow it up. You could be getting paid for it." Then he leaned closer. "Also, our uniforms are a bit more... you know... dignified. This way we could still have someone on our team watching her, and you won't have anyone you don't trust snooping around."

"Noted," Rei said sharply, "but **joining** your department poses the same problems as letting you guys hang around all the time. It's out of the question."

Ranma sighed. "Ah. Well, it was worth a shot. What does Usagi-chan think of all this, exactly?"

"Usagi-chan likes you guys," Rei said bluntly. "Frankly, if it were just up to her she'd probably be employed in your department by now. But this isn't just about her; your actions toward her could be endangering the rest of us, and by extension, a whole lot of other people too."

Ranma looked conflicted at that point. He understood Rei's concerns, but the situation still seemed wrong to him.

"Usagi-chan really feels terrible about this," Rei continued, seeing that the pigtailed cop was thinking seriously about what she had said. "She understands that she has to stop accepting your help, but she isn't the most rational person in the world. She's probably tearing her hair out in the bathroom fretting over this even as we speak."

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In the bathroom, Usagi stared at her reflection, an expression of profound surprise and confusion on her face.

'When was the last time I used the toilet?'

It was a reasonable question, even if some might have imagined she'd have more pressing matters on her mind. The last time she recalled using a bathroom for anything other than showers and makeup was before her unwilling conversion into a cyborg. She honestly had no idea what to think about this.

Frowning slightly, she turned and walked into a toilet stall.

After closing the door and pulling down her pants and underwear, she tenderly sat down on the seat and waited for almost a full minute, thinking intently the whole time.

'Hmmmm... hey, computer?'

A green blip appeared in her field of vision, and a cursor started blinking in front of her.

'Uh... well, this is kind of a weird question, even to ask myself, but... how do I pee?'

The cursor didn't move for several seconds.

Waste containment units at 16 capacity. Initiate waste disposal? 

The cyborg scratched her head. 'That's not very full, is it? Well, as long as I'm already here, yes, do the waste disposal thing. She straightened and briefly adjusted her position on the toilet to get more comfortable.

_Shwoop!_ Usagi felt her shirt tighten and threaten to rip as something slid out of the small of her back, and she groaned.

"What? It comes out of THERE now? Why?" Grumbling irritably, a mechanical arm unfolded out of her shoulder and promptly slipped into her shirt to grab whatever had come out. "I'm going to have to get a special toilet built and everything... this is so... eh?" She blinked and stared at the item her mechanical claw was holding: a small glass cylinder with a metal cap. Within the tube was a strange, blue-green liquid that glowed ominously in the dim lights of the restroom. After a moment, a reticle appeared over the container, and several readouts appeared around it.

Usagi, not knowing what a "Geiger readout" was, shrugged and then stood up and pulled up her pants. Then she took the cylinder, unscrewed the lid, and dumped the unusual - though still kind of gross-looking - contents into the toilet bowl before flushing.

'Well, it's a bit strange, but a lot cleaner, I guess," she mumbled to herself as her robot arm pushed the container into her back once more. Then, without another thought, she walked out of the stall to wash her hands.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"All right, look, I can accept that you people aren't keen on us following you around, but I still have my orders, you know?" Ranma explained as he finished the last of his dinner. "If we want to work this out, we'll have to have Usagi-chan come to HQ and talk to Asuka herself. If she's convinced, then it all works out."

Rei frowned. "And how hard will it be to talk her out of this surveillance thing?"

"Shouldn't be too tough. She'll want to have as many people together as possible to fight off the vampires, and it seems pretty obvious to me that the Angels are in no hurry to get her back," Ranma explained. "But it'll have to come from Usagi-chan. I mean, she hasn't even met you before, so your argument probably won't hold a lot of weight."

The raven-haired girl nodded, a slight smile on her face. "That sounds fair. We'll do that." Finally letting herself relax again, she slid her chair back toward the table. "I'm glad you're not fighting me about this. I got the impression that you weren't this sensible."

"Yeah. I got the impression that if I tried to argue, you'd hurt me," he explained tactlessly. Years of dealing with assertive women with short fuses had made him quite sensitive to their presence.

Rei's pleased disposition evaporated, and her eyes narrowed. She didn't say anything, to contradict him, though.

"Anyway, if we're not going to be working together anymore, I think you guys should probably lay off the Freedom's Angels," Ranma said, wiping his mouth. "Probably the vampires too. It's really dangerous."

"Thanks **Mom**, but we're plenty used to dangerous," Rei deadpanned before taking a sip of tea.

Ranma's eyes narrowed back. "Hey, I'm just looking out for you guys. If you couldn't take Igov on your own, you think you can just roll into Wraith Labs and kidnap one of their leaders?"

Rei's hands clenched into fists. "I told you, he caught us by surprise! AND he had artillery support!"

"And you don't think there are more surprises hanging out in their labs?" Ranma pressed, planting one elbow on the table to lean on it. "Or more artillery? You want me to just stand by and let a bunch of girls walk into a deathtrap?"

A vein popped up on Rei's head from the "bunch of girls" comment. "We're stronger than you think. Don't underestimate us!"

"We can talk about who's underestimating who after I appear just in time to save you from a horde of rampaging mecha," Ranma said, snorting.

Rei clenched her teeth. "You start poking around in our battles again, and we'll see who needs saving!"

The pair glared at each other for a moment, and a spark of electricity flashed between them.

"Hey, are you two all right?" Usagi asked as she walked back to the table, looking concerned.

The tension melted as Ranma and Rei turned away from each other.

"Fine," Rei mumbled. 'Egocentric jerk.'

"It's nothing," Ranma said. 'Arrogant brat.'

Rei spent a moment combing a hand through her hair before speaking again. "Anyway, we have it all sorted out, for the most part. But you're still going to have to go down to crazy cop hea-" she stopped speaking, and blinked, as if the statement had been a mistake. "Sorry. Down to DAPC headquarters and tell the top brass that you're going to need some alone time, okay?"

Usagi winced as Ranma bristled again. "Okay... but can we order something else first? I'm still hungry."

_BWOOOM!!_ The entire building shook briefly as an explosion roared from the rear of the restaurant, and after Ranma had helped Usagi get back on her feet (as naturally she had fallen flat on her face), the trio all turned to find the cause of the disturbance, their expressions grim.

The door to the women's bathroom burst open, and a slightly charred woman stumbled out, her hair in disarray and a rather large scorch mark on her dress. "Fire! There's a fire in the middle stall!"

"Somebody call the fire department!"

"It's spreading fast! Someone get an extinguisher!"

"It's blue! Dear gods, why is it blue?!" 

Ranma's face darkened. "Ah... something you want to tell us, Usagi-chan?"

A patch of skin over Usagi's wrist popped open like a hatch, revealing a digital watch. "Wow, look at the time! If I'm going to make it to headquarters before they close, I have to go, now!" Usagi said, sweating profusely.

"It's two in the afternoon," Rei deadpanned.

"And headquarters doesn't really 'close'," Ranma added. "At least, not unless Snake is ditching work again."

Usagi wasn't about to let a bunch of petty, inconvenient "facts" impede her escape, and she quickly dumped some cash on the table before latching onto Ranma and dragging him out the front door. "No time to argue! Have to hurry! Busy busy busy!"

Rei rolled her eyes and stood up, ignoring the waiters rushing past with extinguishers and a garden hose. 'I'd feel a lot better criticizing the DAPC if my friends were any better,' she groused silently. 'Oh well. Usagi knows what she has to do and Saotome has been put in his place. Nothing could go wrong at this point.'

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"Hm? What this, then?" Asuka asked, turning away from her coffee to regard Usagi and Ranma.

Usagi bowed low, her face flushed. "I'm really sorry about this! I know you guys are only trying to help and I really appreciate how nice you've been to me, but I can't work with you anymore!"

The bluette raised an eyebrow, and then took another sip of coffee before putting the mug down. "... Are you talking about that job offer from Snake?"

"Er..." Usagi hesitated for a moment. "Well... that too. I can't work for you guys. I mean, it doesn't sound that bad, really, and I DO kinda need a job right now, but things are... complicated."

"Hmmm..." Asuka sat back in her chair for a moment, crossing her arms over her chest. "I admit that I don't know much about the lifestyles of famous magical girls/college students, but it sounds to me like there's some resentment in the ranks."

Usagi chuckled in embarrassment. "Ah, yeah. Something like that."

"I understand. Not everyone appreciates government protection," the police captain admitted, stopping to take another sip of coffee. "Especially when Lieutenant Snake is doing the protecting."

_BLAMMO!!_ Everyone in the room ducked reflexively as an explosion boomed throughout the station lobby, originating from somewhere down the hall.

"Not my fault!" Usagi said immediately, crawling under Asuka's desk.

"Of course it wasn't," a male, accented voice said before Snake emerged from the hallway. He looked slightly scorched, and smoke wafted from the rocket launcher carried over his shoulder. "Somebody call me?"

"NO," Asuka snapped as she stood back up. "Why in the hell are you firing ROCKETS in here?! We've barely started fixing the building from the vampire assault!"

"I was clearing out the sub-levels like you asked me to!" Snake protested, dropping the rocket launcher down at his side.

"What? Something got loose?" Ranma asked in concern.

"Nope. No damage. And man, you should have seen the look on the bloodsucker's face when we told him that his friends busted in here and all died! HA! Priceless!"

Asuka's eyes narrowed. "Then WHAT were you trying to blow up?"

"Roaches."

Ranma's eyes bugged out. "You mean those mutant roaches are back?"

"Nope." Snake said, unapologetic as usual.

Asuka gripped her hands into fists and growled. "We'll talk about this later. Tsukino-san has just arrived to personally decline the little employment offer you handed her without my approval."

"What? Why?" Snake asked, looking honestly surprised.

"Yeah, I can't IMAGINE why she would give up the possibility of working here with you," Ranma deadpanned. 'This is really the kind of person she wants dating her friends? Weirdo.'

"I'm sorry!" Usagi exclaimed, bowing again. "It's not that I don't want the job, but I can't take it! It... well..."

"It's all right, you don't need to explain the particulars," Asuka said gently. "Still... even though I don't like Snake going over my head like that, if you had accepted the job, I couldn't really think of a good reason to turn you down. You have experience, you seem reasonably sane, and you can carry your own personal armory around with you to work. Much better than our last blonde." Of course, Usagi also seemed fairly incompetent, overemotional, and was as irritatingly bubbly as Sakura ever was, but those issues seemed petty when one of her top officers was using a rocket launcher to kill insects indoors.

Usagi felt another pang deep within her at the praise. "Ah, well... yeah... it can't be helped, though."

Snake frowned. This was far from ideal. It sounded like Usagi wasn't just refusing to join the department, but was cutting herself off from the DAPC entirely. And while he found the girl's personality annoying and her combat skills laughable, she had a stomach/fridge full of beer, which more than redeemed the other flaws.

At this point, however, there was only one persuasion tactic he had left.

"Are you sure you don't want to be a cop? All the cool people are doing it."

As Asuka facefaulted, Usagi turned toward Snake, blinking. "What?"

"All the cool people are police officers. Just look at me and Ranma. You want to be cool, don't you?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"And that's why I need your help to find a place to stay close to the headquarters. I don't want a long commute to work every day, you know?" Usagi explained.

Ami and Minako stared at her slack-jawed. Behind them, Makoto sweatdropped as Rei banged her head repeatedly against the kitchen wall.

The blonde cyborg blinked innocently as she sat down at the other end of the table, wearing a pair of blue nylon pants, heavy boots, and a black tank top. In her hands was her new police badge, the bizarre emblem of the DAPC gleaming brightly in the dim kitchen lighting.

"You're not serious. You can't be serious," Rei chanted as she stopped smashing her head uselessly and grabbed fistfuls of her hair in frustration. "This is a joke, right? It's a stupid practical joke! KNOCK IT OFF!!"

Usagi winced. "Rei-chan, don't be so mean! It's not really anything worth getting angry about..."

"Not worth getting angry about? You were supposed to go to their headquarters to tell them to buzz off for good, and instead you let them HIRE you!" Rei growled.

"I just wanted to fit in!" Usagi complained, sniffling.

Ami massaged her forehead. "Putting aside the absurd abuse of peer pressure, the numerous complications of your new career and your old one, AND your doing the exact opposite of what Luna asked you to do, you're going to have trouble finding available properties very close to the station. The nearest residential sector is just out of walking distance."

"So what? She can fly," Makoto pointed out.

Usagi grimaced. "Actually, I'd prefer it if I didn't have to fly to work every morning. The rocket boosters are convenient... but flying is kind of scary." She briefly recalled the booster mishaps that had resulted in her crashing through walls, smashing up sections of sidewalk, and smacking her head on lamp posts. "... And painful."

"Well, the other problem is that the only facilities available are upper-income houses and condos. They're probably a bit beyond your pay grade. Besides that, the closer one gets to DAPC headquarters, the more obscenely expensive the insurance rates become," Ami mused.

Minako looked eager as she leaned across the table. "So, how much are you making? Can you buy a car?"

Usagi frowned as she tried to remember the details of her employment. It was difficult, since her "orientation" consisted of Asuka listing the various regulations and responsibilities she had as an officer, and then grumbling about all the different ways everyone always ignored them. She had found Junko and Tiro's disrespect for the department's sexual harassment policy to be particularly galling.

"I think they said... eight million yen a year?" Usagi said, scratching her head.

Makoto blinked. "Wow. That's not bad."

"Yeah, but they said that workman's comp works differently for us than in most jobs," Usagi explained, frowning. "Also, instead of a dental or medical plan, they gave me a business card from the local auto mechanic and a pack of coupons."

"Redundant, I'm sure," Ami mumbled, scratching her chin. "After all, you have a very efficient auto-repair system, and Dr. Tuko seemed perfectly competent when it came to fixing you before."

"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" Rei suddenly shouted, directing all eyes toward her. "What is WRONG with you people? Don't tell me you've accepted this!"

Makoto shrugged. "Well, why not? At this point she's already employed and everything. Why turn back now?"

"Because instead of distancing herself from a cadre of crazy people with guns, she's supposed to work for them now?" Rei deadpanned. "That seems like a pretty good reason to me."

Minako sighed. "Well... I can understand where Luna's coming from, I guess... and I still haven't forgiven them for arresting us... but on the other hand, this is the perfect chance for Usagi-chan to set me up with Snake!" She giggled as Usagi gave her a bright thumbs-up.

_Thump!_ Rei banged her head into the wall once more, and left it there as she sighed. "Ami-chan? PLEASE tell me you see something wrong with this."

Ami rolled her eyes. "Of course. There's plenty wrong with this." She really felt bad when she saw the glimmer of hope in Rei's eyes, but she had no choice. "Unfortunately, I don't think any of it matters. It's ultimately up to Usagi-chan where she starts a career, and I'm not about to challenge that. Especially if the majority is okay with it." The Senshi didn't operate as a democracy for the most part, but Ami still felt that Makoto and Minako's acceptance precluded any interference on her part.

"Well, that's just great," the raven-haired girl groused. "And so it's up to me to return home and inform our irate feline advisors that Usagi has done the exact OPPOSITE of what she was supposed to do, and then put up with their endless complaining for the rest of the night."

"Sounds like the bun calling the oven black," Minako said, snickering. Rei briefly debated a witty comeback, but decided that Minako was humiliating herself just fine without her help.

"If you don't want to put up with Luna, why don't you just stay here for tonight?" Makoto said, shrugging. "Now that Usagi's leaving, they have an extra bed open. And now that Ami's gone alcoholic, we've got enough booze in the fridge for everyone."

"I am not an alcoholic," the bluette protested weakly. "Really, the moment I open a fourth beer everyone starts getting so judgmental..."

Rei considered it. "So, I guess this means that Saotome-san is going to be around a lot, huh?"

"Not necessarily. I mean, now that she's one of us, we won't need to follow her around to keep tabs on her," Ranma said as he walked up behind the raven-haired girl.

Rei nodded. "Yeah, I suppose that's-HEY!" She whirled around angrily. "What are you doing here?"

Ranma blinked, noting that all the girls except Usagi were expressing various levels of shock from his presence. "I was listening in on your discussion. Why?"

Makoto winced. "Ranma-kun, you're really going to have to learn to be a little more dishonest. This just isn't healthy."

Rei's eyes burned as she stared up at the pigtailed man. "I **meant**, why are you here at all? You've managed to drag Usagi into your defunct little family, and by your own admission you don't need to follow her around all the time anymore. Don't you have better things to do?"

Ranma crossed his arms over his chest, glaring right back. "Like Usagi said, she doesn't really like to fly. So she needed someone to drive her here."

The Senshi of Mars snorted. "So you've been demoted from bodyguard to chauffeur, have you?"

Ranma's stared hard at her for a few more moments, then wilted. "Well, actually, Snake drove us down here. I really don't have better things to do than tag along."

_Slam!_ Ami briefly glanced behind her as Minako slammed the door behind her. "Hm. We won't see her for a while." She cocked her head to the side. "Saotome-san, how big is your current living space?"

The pigtailed man blinked. "Eh? Pretty big, I guess. More than big enough for me and Hunter, at least. Why?"

"Well, then the housing issue seems fairly simple to me. Usagi-chan, why don't you move in with him?"

Rei groaned as Usagi looked confused. "Eh? Why would I do that?"

"Saotome-san already makes a daily commute to work, presumably without the aid of jet boosters," Ami explained. "Also, you seem perfectly comfortable having him around all the time. Thus, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that you room with him until you find a more permanent place to settle in."

"I don't know," Usagi said, playing with the hem of her shirt nervously. "I mean, I've already imposed on Ranma-kun enough..."

"Nah, it's no problem," Ranma said, smiling. It'd be kind of nice to have other people in the house besides him. The last time he had lived with someone else was when he had lived with Kyle and Sakura, and although that had its own complications, it would probably be a lot easier this time around now that the blonde living with him didn't have a crush on him. "You can stay as long as you want. I've never gotten to actually use the guest room before."

"You're serious, aren't you?" Rei groused. "Hell, maybe I'll just move in here, then. When Luna hears this she's going to bite my head off." She continued grumbling as she walked out the door, figuring that watching Minako hit on the psychotic American would at least be entertaining as well as ridiculous.

Ranma made a face at her as she left, then crossed his arms over his chest. "Man, what's her problem, anyway? It's like she had a grudge against me before I even knew her."

Usagi chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of her head. "Oh, Rei-chan is just like that sometimes. Once you get to know her, she'll... uh... she'll..." the cyborg frowned. "Well, actually, she'll act pretty much the same. But she's a really good friend!"

"I don't doubt that, but if just being around is going to make her mad, I'd rather avoid her."

Makoto snickered slightly. "It's not you 'just being around,' Ranma-kun. You're pretty good at getting under her skin."

Ranma frowned. "Oh. Yeah. I get that a lot." It was strange, really. Most girls he could speak to without provoking them at all, but something about Rei seemed to challenge him, almost daring him to take his jabs at her. And Ranma never could resist and challenge, even when every shred of decency and common sense told him it was a bad idea.

Makoto looked thoughtful for a moment. "Actually... why don't you two start gathering up Usagi-chan's stuff? I have something I need to talk to Rei-chan about." Without waiting for a response, she turned and rushed out of the room.

Usagi shrugged it off and then turned to Ranma again, bowing low. "Thank you very much! I'm sorry that you're constantly helping me with everything!"

Ranma waved her off, smiling pleasantly. "Ah, it's no problem. I like helping you. Also, it keeps the weird ghost lady in my dreams from bugging me."

The blonde cyborg blinked. "What? Ghost lady?"

"It's nothing. Let's start moving your things."

"Oh. Okay." Usagi forgot about the strange comment and pointed toward her room. "It's all in there. Mako-chan helped box up everything, so all you have to is carry it out and put it in the car."

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Uh... all I have to do? You're not going to help?"

Usagi looked surprised at the comment, and almost insulted. "You want me to do all that heavy lifting? I'm a girl! I could hurt myself!"

"You can lift over a metric ton, easily," Ami deadpanned from where she was opening another beer. "Plus, your skeletal structure can withstand levels of pressure that could crush a tank like a soda can."

Usagi looked adamant as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm still a girl! What if I broke a nail?"

"Your nails are made of tritanium alloy, of the sort used in experimental thermonuclear reactors, and shaped by what I can only guess were the most powerful industrial lasers," Ami continued, stopping to guzzle down half of her beverage. "It's no exaggeration to say they're some of the most durable objects on the face of the Earth."

Ranma's eyes narrowed at Usagi.

Usagi's eyes, in response, got wide, round, and wet. And then she sniffled.

"God damn it," Ranma mumbled as he turned around and got to work. Cyborg or not, Usagi was, indeed, a girl. Her mastery of puppy-dog eyes certainly proved that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Rei-chan! Wait up!" Makoto said as she rushed after the raven-haired girl.

Rei got uneasy as her taller friend reached her and immediately wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Makoto was awfully happy; while she hadn't been too upset about the recent turn of events, this kind of cheer was totally uncalled for. "What?"

The brunette smirked and whispered into Rei's ear. "You know, I knew you had a little crush on the guy before... but you're still hot for him, aren't you?"

Rei twitched and looked indignant as her face turned red. "Wh-What? For Ranma-kun? You're out of your mind!"

"'Ranma-kun', hmm? What happened to 'Saotome-san'?" Makoto's smirk grew longer.

Rei turned her head away. "What of it? You call him by his first name, and you don't know him at all! At least I've had a conversation with him without trying to get him naked!"

Makoto looked disappointed. "Oh. Do you need some tips?"

The raven-haired girl stopped moving down the hall, as Makoto wasn't letting go. "Are you GOING anywhere with this?"

"I just wanted to confirm that you wanted him. I'll back off if you want, you know. There are plenty of guys out there for me."

"What gave you that ludicrous idea?!" Rei shouted. Her face was flushing again, though.

Makoto cocked her head to the side in thought. "Well... it's just a theory, but... you have a lot of admirers, Rei-chan."

Rei raised an eyebrow. "I've noticed. So what?" Her popularity with men came as no surprise to anyone, and despite her frequent complaints of lecherous idiots drooling over her all the time, she took great pride in her looks and the attention it got.

"SO, you could have any guy you wanted," Makoto mused, letting go of the fire Senshi and slowly walking around her, rubbing her chin. "Smart guys, cute guys, tough guys, rich guys... we're talking the cream of the crop, here."

"Could you hurry up and get to the point? If that maniac American tries to kill Mina-chan, I'd like to arrive in time to stop him," Rei groused.

Makoto ignored her interruption. "Yet you don't bother with any of them. I know you're not too busy for a sex life, and God knows we've tried every test we could think of to check if you were after Usagi and just too proud to come out of the closet..."

Rei twitched in irritation. That had NOT been a fun week. Well, not for her, anyway. Usagi apparently enjoyed it a lot, and she imagined that Mamoru had been given enough memories for months of naughty dreams.

"Oh, sure, you go on a date every once in a while, but it never goes anywhere! You're surrounded by good-looking, intelligent men with money who do everything in their power to please you, and you're bored to death with them!"

Rei twitched again. "I'm not sure I like where this is headed."

Makoto stopped circling and turned to stare Rei straight in the eyes. "But Ranma's different, right? He stands up to you. He challenges you. He doesn't seem to have those 'perverted impulses' you're always complaining about. And to top things off, he's some sort of martial artist super-cop." Her eyes narrowed as she grinned. "A guy like that seems pretty interesting, don't you think?"

Rei brushed past the taller girl as she continued on down the hall, avoiding eye contact. "Leave the wild romanticism to the blondes, will you? Ranma is annoying, thickheaded, insensitive, brash, and his butt isn't THAT great."

Makoto blinked. "I never said anything about his butt." It was certainly a topic worth covering, but she knew that it took more than good looks to enthrall the Senshi of Mars.

"N-Neither did I," Rei said quickly, stuttering only slightly as she tried to cover the slip. "My point is, he is NOT my type."

"You've been surrounded by 'your type' for over a year now, and you're still not getting any," the brunette said firmly as she followed Rei down the hall. "It's time to stop meandering around wasting your time and jump Ranma-kun's bones."

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that when he's always following Usagi around like her freaking shadow?" Rei asked heatedly. "... Er, in the completely hypothetical scenario you're describing, I mean. Because I'm not attracted to him. At all." She quickly turned her head to side and coughed, aware that her cheeks nearly matched her fuku's skirt color by now.

Makoto would have grinned wider if her jaw could have borne the strain. "Ah, so is that the problem? Is Usagi-chan monopolizing all of Ranma-kun's time? I can sympathize, I guess. It was annoying when Usagi-chan kept telling me to stop hitting on him all the time. So what do you want to do about it, hmmm?"

"Absolutely nothing," the raven-haired girl said firmly, her expression hardening. "I'm ending this conversation. Usagi and Ranma are living together now, and they can do whatever the hell they want. So can you, for that matter. It's none of my business, and outside of my opinion that this whole arrangement is crazy, I'm staying out of it."

"Tsk! You're so BORING sometimes, you know that?" Makoto teased. "I'll help you nail him, if you'd like!"

"Do you know where Mina-chan went?" Rei asked, being true to her decision to end the discussion. Makoto looked decidedly disappointed as she shook her head. "Well, then I guess she'd be... wait. Oh! There she is! Mina-chan!"

Rei called out as she spied the blonde walking through the hallway, looking confused.

"Rei-chan?" Minako looked at her, glanced up and down the hallway, and then approached while frowning deeply. "Did you see Snake around here? He wasn't out with his car."

"No, we didn't. You can tell because of the lack of terrified screaming," Rei deadpanned. "Honestly Mina-chan, what do you see in that psycho, anyway? He's not spectacularly handsome or bright, he's senselessly violent, and it really seems as if he doesn't like you at all." Standing behind her, Makoto nodded mutely; while normally her opinions on love and romance diverged considerably from Rei's, she had witnessed Snake's callous disregard for life when she saw him shoot Mamoru repeatedly just to get information. Besides that, Minako wasn't exactly a girl who was hard up for companionship.

The Senshi of Venus frowned and placed one hand on her hip as she rubbed her chin with the other. "Well... it's not easy to explain..." She snapped her fingers. "When I saw him face off against that robot in the junkyard, he... well, that image was burned into my mind, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. That the man I was looking at was a terrible beast that only I could tame. Someone who's known only terror, pain, and death, but no love." She smiled and posed briefly with one hand gripped into a fist. "I **will** conquer Snake's heart! It is my responsibility-no, my **duty** as the Senshi of Venus to... what are you guys staring at, anyway?"

Rei and Makoto were currently gaping in shock as they watched a vent swing open from the air duct running along the middle of the hall ceiling with a small, black gun barrel slowly extending out of the opening, aimed down at the distracted blonde.

"HEY! What do you think you're doing?!" Rei snarled angrily. Shooting Mamoru was one thing, but that bastard wasn't going to get away with hurting Minako for no reason!

The blonde in question blinked, and then turned around right after the gun barrel slipped quietly back into the duct opening. "What? Who? Were you talking to me?" Looking around, she couldn't see anyone else...

"In the air duct!" Makoto shouted angrily. "What the hell are you doing in there? Come out now!"

Minako blinked and looked up, and heard a slight rustling noise before a small slip of paper floated out of the opening. She promptly snatched it up and read it aloud. "It says: 'Make me'."

Rei's eye twitched. "Is this really the caliber of the people we're entrusting with Usagi-chan? How childish can you idiots get?"

A second paper floated from the opening, and Minako grabbed it. "'I know you are, but what am I?'"

A vein popped up on Rei's head. "All right jerk, you asked for it!"

Makoto suddenly looked wary as the Senshi of Mars stalked up to the opening in the duct. "Uh, Rei-chan, do you think that's a good idea? He has a gun."

"I expect he has several," Rei growled as she reached the opening. The duct was still almost a meter over her head, though, so jumping up into the system was out of the question unless she had Makoto boost her up. But that was plan B. "You get out of there right now, Snake, or I'll get Ranma over here to drag you out!"

Another piece of paper floated down from above, but Rei just swatted it out of the air. "If you want to be childish about this, fine. Then I'll give you 'til the count of three to come down before I tell on you. ONE! TWO!"

_Klonk!_ "Ow!" Rei exclaimed as a small metal object bounced off of her head and onto the floor. Spinning around, she stared at the object for a moment before her eyes bugged out; the object was a grenade, and a cursory inspection revealed the pin to be nowhere in sight.

"A grenade?" Makoto gasped, frozen stiff from surprise.

"HIT THE DECK!!" _BANG!!_

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"Pfeh. Dumb girls, freaking out over nothing. Can't even recognize a tranquilizer gun when they see one," Snake mumbled as he climbed out of the ceiling duct, landing on the floor of the maintenance closet and dusting himself off briefly. "Or a flashbang for that matter. What are they teaching kids nowadays in these worthless schools?"

Taking a moment to close the entrance to the air ducts, he slipped the rifle over his shoulder and walked out into the hall. It was certainly unusual for the American to carry anything non-lethal on his person, but he DID have special armaments for the occasions in which he couldn't kill the people that were annoying him.

"You! What are YOU doing here?"

Blinking, the American turned around to look down the hall. He was quite surprised to see Mamoru Chiba stalking down the hall toward him, looking understandably displeased. Well, he wasn't actually "stalking" so much as "limping," as the man seemed to have taken another bullet to the leg at some point.

"Can I help you?" Snake asked, looking honestly confused as to why the man seemed so upset.

Mamoru scowled as he approached. "I asked what you were doing here."

"I just drove Usagi-chan and Ranma down here. What's the problem?"

"What's the problem? WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?!" Mamoru screamed, causing Snake to wince from the noise. "Look at my leg! I was shot AGAIN! Every time I go near you or your headquarters, I get shot! I've had so much surgery recently that the nurses put a nameplate on my hospital room as a joke!"

The American nodded, rubbing his chin. "I see... well, I don't remember shooting you since the last time I was here, but I don't really deserve the benefit of the doubt. I DO shoot a lot of people." He raised an eyebrow. "So, EVERY time you come near me, you get shot in the leg?"

"When I'm lucky," Mamoru growled. "The first time you shot me in BOTH legs! And the second time you got my arms, too!"

"I see," Snake mumbled. "For a man with such intelligent pattern recognition, you sure aren't very bright, then."

Mamoru raised an eyebrow. "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

Blam! Blam!

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Igov smiled warmly as he inspected the construction in the Freedom's Angels' special weapons bunker, his hands clasped behind his back.

Robotic drones carrying welding torches scrambled over the smooth curvature of the massive device being built, sealing the seams between long strips of metal bent carefully into a near-perfect dome.

Scientists and engineers scurried all over the bottom of the bunker, attaching cables and building sensitive walls of circuits in the chronosphere's growing metal shell. Outside the huge machine, men worked tirelessly on a huge core of sophisticated magnetic relays, constantly building, fixing, and discarding damaged systems every time a minor error was made.

Next to the core, dozens of smaller devices were slowly constructed under an array of precise, computer-assisted mechanical tools as scientists mumbled and conversed nearby, utterly fascinated.

The Russian shook his head in amusement; the chronosphere technology was always a sure-fire hit with scientists. Whenever one of them complained about being forced to work on technologies used to kill innocent people, or the constant and deadly surveillance of the militant terrorists, all he had to do was let them poke at a temporal-based teleporter for a few hours, and all was well, like some sort of nerd pacifier.

Walking up to another robot - this one with an LCD screen and speakers - Igov spoke. "Cursory inspection passed. Igov request detailed report on construction progress."

_Blip-beep!_ The screen flickered briefly before it showed some wire-frame blueprints, with the completed sections filled in with a translucent gray. _Construction on primary unit is progressing at 107 expected rate. Early projections of supply shortages have been corrected for. Unit is expected to be online in three days. Secondary unit progress is lagging at 71 expected rate of progress. The devices recovered from the alien technology cache necessary to reproduce the chronosphere have suffered considerable damage. Cache is 40 unusable._

Igov snorted. "Considering it DAPC to engage the aliens, Igov be thankful." The secondary devices were, naturally, far less important than the primary chronosphere, so the problems that hindered their construction didn't overly concern the general. The smaller chronospheres had a relatively small operational radius, and could not project the proper temporal distortion fields without the devices themselves being dragged along for the trip, which sharply decreased both their strategic value and their average operational lifetime on the battlefield.

Of course, Igov made tremendously good use of his own device, but most of his forces were not so proficient.

"What of U-93 unit?" The cyborg asked. That chronosphere in particular was being designed to be as small and energy-efficient as possible, so that it could be fitted to Shin-Alpha and increase the android assassin's already fantastic tactical mobility.

_Progress is stalled. Several design complications have indicated that-_

"Igov not need to hear details. Have Professor Konta consulted on complications and add further staff and resource to completion of blueprints. Priority code beta." As always, he hated bringing Yoshi in on his projects, but Igov was more than capable of putting his military objectives before his personal feelings.

_Understood. Will there be anything else?_

"Indeed. Follow." Twitching his finger at the droid, Igov entered the elevator at the front of the construction area and then pushed his hand into the control dock, the sensors immediately registering his admittedly unique handprint and granting him full access to the facility.

Pressing a button next to the door, the gate and the main doors shut quickly, and the elevator ascended rapidly from the reinforced construction deck to the bio-weapon testing facilities.

The facilities had originally been used to observe and test different strains of vamp mutants, as they were the tamest and least dangerous of the mutant strains, and this particular base was geared toward cybernetic and mechanical research, lacking many of the security measures necessary to handle the devastating power of the T-virus or some of the more dangerous mutants. However, that research wasn't going anywhere fast, so Igov had been all too happy to bring in new test subjects.

"AAAAUGGHIIYAAAAH!!"

The Russian ignored the scream of agony as he stepped off the elevator, his engineering drone following behind him. The entire hall echoed with screams, moans, and pained gasps of varying intensity as he walked through the halls, noting the occasional blood slick on the floor that hadn't been cleaned up; not surprising, really. There weren't any janitors that had security clearance to come down to these levels, and scientists weren't keen on mopping.

Igov sighed. 'It looks like I'll have to design ANOTHER robot to do the dirty work around here. How annoying.'

He pushed a few buttons on a keypad outside of a particular lab, and the door slid open with a hiss.

"Gugh... haaah... urrhn..." lying on a stainless steel table was a vampire captured in the nightclub raid... or his upper torso, at least. His chest had been sliced open for observation, and the vampire's weakly twitching organs were easily visible through the cavity being held open by metal clamps. The undead's lower torso had been severed just above the pelvis, and a small bedpan had been placed underneath the slanted table to collect the various fluids that drained from his sundered body.

The midian was held fast by reinforced titanium arm and neck restraints, and there was an armed cyborg in the room as well, to provide added security for the dangerous creatures.

The two scientists that had been poking around inside the vampire turned and promptly bowed. "Ah! General Yuchtzky! We're honored by this visit!"

Igov bowed politely, then gestured to the vampire. "How are things with new test subjects?"

"These are remarkable specimens, General. We've only had them for several hours, but already we've learned a great deal. Most of our research tends to create more questions than it solves, but even so..."

The cyborg took the partially-dissected vampire by the jaw, lifting the creature's head to stare him in the eyes. "This one still lucid?"

"More or less. They retain mental coherency very well despite massive physical trauma, but this one has been subjected to numerous other chemical and biological substances and has been drifting in and out of consciousness. Tests conclude that these midians do not suffer shock, and are impervious to conventional diseases and poisons. I personally recommend securing a few subjects and transporting them to a more secure compound for T-virus testing to determine if man-made viruses can be made to affect them. We're not entirely sure at this point by what mechanism they-"

"Yes, yes, Igov understand," the cyborg interrupted, once more not wanting to be dragged down by the researcher's enthusiasm for his work. He turned toward the droid following him. "See to it. I want four units transferred. Heavy security detail."

_Affirmative._

Igov eventually let go of the vampire, disappointed that the creature didn't even snap at him or mumble an insult; evidently this one was thoroughly broken already. "How are security measures holding up?"

"They've proven adequate, General. There have been a few minor incidents, but no injuries to our personnel thusfar. These creatures are fairly clever, and your cyborgs are quite dull... no offense."

"None taken," Igov said promptly, well aware of the problem. "Do you have proper analysis of vampire capabilities?"

"So far we've identified an unusually enhanced musculature, allowing for strength comparable to our own biologically enhanced soldiers... the interesting note is the corresponding improvements in reflexes and agility that vampires have displayed that we haven't seen with our own enhancements. As midians grow stronger, it would seem they develop the skills to use their powers instinctually. And then of course, there are the considerable regenerative abilities and the ability to sustain the body despite critical damage to normally vital biological systems."

Igov rubbed his chin. There were other abilities, and he knew it. But then, he had only seen an indication of such from the woman who was leading a band of vampires away from the fighting. Perhaps the prisoners were too weak? 'I may have to secure more powerful lab rats if we're to get anything truly useful from wiping out the bloodsuckers.'

"What of midian weaknesses?"

"Ah, yes, my favorite," said the other scientist, who had been mostly quiet and respectful as his superiors spoke. "Vampires have displayed alarming chemical and biological reactions when coming in contact with the element silver, as well as exposure to UV radiation. Silver seems to actually burn midians on contact, and preliminary tests have revealed significant nerve damage. We believe that this damage may somehow hinder the midian's supernatural abilities, as the burns seem to heal much slower than normal. Artificial UV radiation offers a less severe reaction, although all our test subjects have a strong aversion to it. At this point we're questioning the feasibility of UV equipment for tactical use."

Igov nodded. "Understood." Once more he turned toward the droid behind him. "Place order to replace current restraints with silver-plated cuffs. Security is top priority so long as these creatures are in facility."

_Affirmative. Placing order... Note: if one more item valued at fifteen dollars or more is ordered, we will qualify for Amazon's super saver free shipping!_

Igov blinked. "Order is coming from... yeah," one of the scientists said, smiling. "They have all sort of useful stuff now!"

The other scientist nodded as he picked up a scalpel and slowly made an incision in the vampire's exposed heart. "I still use it mostly for books, though. I bought Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide for my brother working in the main bio-weapon labs."

The vampire made a strangled gurgling noise, but was largely ignored.

"Really? Is book any good?" Igov asked, rubbing his chin in thought.

"A little outdated, since it doesn't address the mutation capacity of advanced strains of Solanum like the T-virus, but still useful. My brother says it saved his life once when he messed up a security drill." He continued cutting open the heart, though he wasn't paying very close attention.

"Fascinating. Igov may get copies for troops. Sounds like worthwhile material."

"I'd recommend it. It really-oops!" He quickly drew the scalpel out of the vampire's twitching heart as the creature screeched weakly. "Aw, dangit... I cut too deeply again."

"Why do you keep slicing up his circulatory system, anyway?"

"For SCIENCE! That's why."

"That's not a real answer, you know."

Igov sighed and shook his head. "Enough. Igov needs tactical solutions to combating midian threat. Silver bullets cost-prohibitive. And UV radiation ineffective?"

"Kind of. I mean, feel free to strap some UV lights onto your machines if you want, but honestly our cyborg and armored forces seem entirely adequate to fight them as they are now." The scientist shrugged.

Igov frowned. "Complacency only lead to defeat and loss. Igov will not let these creatures take forces by surprise." Then he cocked his head to the side. "... How do midian handle electric attacks?"

The scientists blinked in tandem. "Ah... I really have no idea," the first admitted, scratching his head. "I mean, given that high voltage normally causes circulatory trauma, it may be effective, but given that a vampire's heart doesn't need to actually **function**..." he trailed off.

The other man shook his head. "We could find out, but running a proper battery of tests would exhaust all our current test subjects to make sure the necessary variables are accounted for..."

Igov shrugged. "There no need for all that." _Cha-chunk!_ His tesla claws extended from his right wrist, and then sparked briefly. "Beginning test."

_BRRRZACK!!_ "Guoohaaugh!"

The scientists nodded to themselves as they watched Igov electrocute the mutilated vampire, casting glances at their measurement devices.

"Fascinating. It seems the energy charge actually forced the heart to beat a few times."

"It's as if the muscle, in its dead but preserved state, begins to function again on impulse. Intriguing. And kind of funny, if you think about it. If you were to restore life to a vampire, would that kill it?"

The first scientist narrowed his eyes. "We're going to need more test subjects. And electric generators. And jumper cables. Lots and LOTS of jumper cables."

Igov let go of the vampire and shrugged, noting with disappointment that the midian was still conscious, and thus not truly dead. "Very well. Do as you will. Contact Igov with update in forty-eight hour."

"Of course, General. Have a good day."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Far, far above the subterranean vaults that housed the next generation of war machines to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace, an equally covert force of superhumans had been stirred.

Ran's penthouse nest was a veritable hornet's nest of activity. Enraged shouting dominated the atmosphere, along with a fair amount of panic, and vampires rapidly jumped off of the complex to the surrounding buildings as others leapt and crawled up the side of the building to join the chaos.

It wasn't a fight or anything; really, the mess of shouting, moaning, grieving and cursing could only be described as organized and prolonged panic. The vampires had taken in news of these new assaults on their homes and the scores of dead and captured, and their passionate, impulsive natures had promptly consumed them. Unrestrained fury and thirst for revenge seemed to be the order of the day, but as rumors and accounts of the mysterious cyborg attack began to fit together and crystallize into a picture with more fact than fantasy, the enraged midians were stumped as to where to launch their counter-attack. Although several terrorist alcoves had been raided by hungry undead, the Freedom's Angels were never virgins, and thus there were none among their number who knew the location of the terrorists' strongholds.

Of course, the other culprit was quite assaultable, at least in the sense that they knew where to find it. The DAPC's headquarters was freely available public knowledge.

That said, there were some particularly rash creatures who had decided to launch attacks on the DAPC's base of operations. One of Ran's personal guard kept repeating to the group in no uncertain terms that there were to be no more attacks on the DAPC until their lord authorized it, but that didn't sway many.

What did sway many was the fearful complaints about them being slowly and systematically obliterated. When naysayers described the inevitable failure of an assault on the "invincible, fanatical DAPC," it rang with far too much truth for the vampires' comfort. After all, some of their finest members had fallen in a systematic attack on the officers.

The reputation of the DAPC certainly discouraged rash action as well. With this news of vampires being butchered en masse, was a suicide mission really in order?

Some midians went anyway, but they tended to leave piecemeal, managing to convince a few of their closest friends while others alternated between angry howling and fearful whispers. 

Kimiko shook her head sadly as she watched several foolish young monsters run off.

Oh, sure, not all of them were leaving to assault a group of heavily-armed monster hunters who were now expecting an attack. Some were simply leaving to feed, or maybe to flee in an attempt to find their own, personal safe haven, disillusioned that they could defend themselves, or that Lord Ran could protect them.

The fury that her master had displayed at her failure was considerable, though she'd only received a laughable slash across the face for returning alone after so many had been killed. No doubt he expected his servants to either emerge victorious or die fighting.

The vampiress let out a rueful chuckle. Ran was no one worth dying for. His ideas and goals were tired and arrogant. He had wallowed in his strength for far too long, ignoring the noble and cautious practices of the vampire lords that had predated him. And now he was leading a new coven of vampires, greater than any undead force the Eastern world had ever seen, into the jaws of Hell itself at the behest of some insane human.

And Kimiko would follow him. For he was the master, and she the slave.

"Humans choose their own nature..." she mumbled, echoing the words of the strange cyborg man that had struck her down before. "What I would give for that chance again..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Foosh!_

"Gugh! Wh-What?" The young vampire looked about wildly as the rooftop he had been using to scope out the headquarters was suddenly painted by a full-power spotlight, utterly blinding him.

_Blam! Blam!_ A pair of rifle rounds bored through his chest before he was able to sort out what was happening, and he fell backwards onto the roof, his body disintegrating. 

"Pft. Aren't the big bad guys supposed to send waves of slightly STRONGER enemies after you once the first wave is defeated? This is a joke," Snake scoffed, turning off the spotlight and then turning on the low-light goggles over his eyes once more.

_Clang!_ One midian landed noisily on the spotlight scaffolding opposite where it was pointed, rapidly orienting on the American gunner and leaping straight down at him.

_Thock!_ That vampire didn't get very far as Kyle appeared and snatched him out of the air, wincing only slightly as the nosferatu started thrashing about and scratching at his arms.

"Yeah, this is kinda easy. It's starting to make me nervous," the blonde mumbled before he grabbed the vampire over his face and then lifted the undead into the air.

_WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!_

Snake sighed as he scanned the rooftops for more vampires, wishing he could enjoy the sight of Kyle smashing a vampire into the ground, but unwilling to lower his guard. "Man, I'm getting bored. They're not even attacking in greater numbers. Losers."

Down below, a pair of other vampires crept through the shadows toward the side entrance of the DAPC headquarters.

"Those bastards are going to pay for what they did!"

"Dude... seriously, though, we should wait! No way we can do this with just us! We're outnumbered, man!"

"Calm down, you damn coward... and be quiet!"

The first vampire snarled as he saw the locked gate that had been hastily attached to the side entrance. "Morons. As if a stupid gate could stop us." His pointed incisors gleamed in the moonlight as he reached forward, grabbing hold of the metal bars.

_Fssssss!_ "GYAAH!! What the hell?!" The young midian shouted as he let go of the gate immediately, holding his hands against his stomach as they burned painfully. "What is this? What is that gate made out of?" This particular vampire, not having read much on vampires and not having been "properly" instructed in some of the more exotic vulnerabilities of the midian honestly had no idea that silver was harmful to the touch.

He grit his teeth, considering trying to rip the gate off once more. He didn't see how he could, though; for some reason, the strength just seemed to seep out of his arms when he touched the gleaming metal.

"Uh... d-dude? I think... oh man..."

Still cradling his injured hands, the rather short-sighted vampire's enhanced hearing picked up a slight, throaty growl coming from the alley behind the pair, and he promptly whirled around.

"Ssssssssrrrrrr..." Hunter's tongue ran along the razor edge of his bloodstained beak as he looked at his new prey. His stomach rumbled, upset that these worthless not-humans turned to dust in his stomach, and left only their agonized screams and absolute terror to satisfy him.

Needless to say, while fun, it WASN'T terribly satisfying. So it was only logical that the alien warbeast was quite eager to feast on as many of the puny not-humans as he could find.

"GUWAAAAAAAH-glurk!"

"AAAAAAUGH-dwugh!"

_Skrak! Schlunk! Snap!_

Inside the headquarters, Asuka leaned back in her office chair as she read a magazine, smiling slightly at the grotesque screams and occasional gunshots that surrounded the building.

Junko was huddled on the chair next to her, shivering at the screams and the sounds of the dead becoming deader. She was in full body armor and cradled a rifle protectively, as if it would be of any real use in her hands.

Asuka didn't bother with any armor, well aware that anything short of powered armor or cybernetic implants wouldn't be much protection against vampires. Of course, she wasn't stupid, and had a Desert Eagle sitting next to her ever-present cup of coffee.

She was also in a perfect position that she could give Junko a swift kick in the head. As a last resort, of course.

"So... why is it we don't just close the stupid HQ until we can get this vampire thing sorted out?" the redhead asked nervously.

Asuka took a sip of coffee before she answered, "Because it's more convenient to make let these freaks come to us than it is to waste all our time hunting them down at night when we should be sleeping anyway. We have daytime duties too, you know." She turned the page in her magazine. "Besides, how would you suggest we keep the bloodsuckers from getting into the sub-levels if we're not here? Put up an 'Employees Only' sign?"

"We could always just leave Hunter here," Junko mumbled, wincing again as she heard the zergling in question release a feral screech from outside.

"Oh, sure, that's a great idea," Asuka deadpanned, taking a quick sip of coffee, "because there sure isn't enough damage around here to fix already. Why, every morning I walk in here and think to myself how nice it would be if I had to scrub another set of bloodstains off the wall, or install a new section of flooring."

Junko frowned. "But... you always make US do that stuff."

"Yes. So stop your whining or it'll be YOUR job to re-tile the main lobby," Asuka snapped. Snake's penchant for high volumes of firepower and Tiro's penchant for bad aim had combined to really do a number on that section of the headquarters, and most of the time they'd had since the vampire attack they spent reinforcing the building.

The redhead grumbled irritably, once more wishing that all the handsome, beefy men in their department didn't insist on staying outside where the action was instead of inside where it was safe, with her.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ran was not a happy bloodsucking monster. No sir-ee.

The vampire lord was trying desperately to calm himself as he entered the mortuary just a scant two blocks from his complex, with only limited success. The rage, the thirst for vengeance was SUFFOCATING, like a hand drawing closed around his throat.

Enemies assailed his people from every side. Nosferatu fell like bowling pins, his brothers and sisters being cut down like mere dogs.

His attempts to strike back had ended in failure. How? How had a coven of mortals with mere guns defeated elder vampires? Some of his best friends were now dust and ash. Were they truly so powerful? Was it possible that these foolish humans, openly reviled by the very people they protected, possessed the strength to defy him? COULD a mere police officer actually hope to protect the citizens from the greatest of the undead? To say nothing of these strange, OTHER forces which dare oppose him. Robots? Cyborgs? Sailor Senshi? Why did every circus freak in Tokyo seem to turn their hostile attentions toward him and his ilk?

These questions gnawed at him like a cancer, and his pace quickened. Of course, he could simply fly toward his destination, or even expend the considerable energy to teleport there, but it was his habit - and a smart one - to resemble a human whenever possible and not attract attention. He hoped that there would come a time that he would never again have to engage in such cowardice, but evidently that day was not yet in sight.

Ran sighed as he pushed his fury deeper, forcing a cool mask over his features as he stared at the mausoleum doors.

It was actually quite unusual for any modern vampire to be found around a graveyard at any time, night or day. Despite being undead, vampires had no use for graveyards; the dead bodies were old, and the blood was no good. Though the bodies could be raised into ghouls, the greater decomposition made them even more worthless than normal, and it wasn't as if there was any shortage of the blasted things. On top of that, vampires were creatures of culture and opulence; the last thing any real nosferatu wanted was to go crawling around some decrepit pile of rock carvings full of the stench of decay.

Ran too found the mausoleum atmosphere distasteful, but it was of little consequence. The... current inhabitant liked it a great deal, and claimed that the atmosphere helped his work. Something about the souls of the departed opening up wider breaches between this world and the next or some such rubbish. Despite being undead himself, he invested little thought in such things.

Entering a room in the center of the structure, he pulled the arm of a memorial statue, causing a stone slab to slide out of place in the rear. Once again, he could have simply phased through the wall, but that would have been rude.

Without fanfare or introduction, the nosferatu stepped into the lair of the prophet.

The space immediately outside the entrance to the prophet's room looked like a poor and desperate attempt to mask ugliness with opulence; bright silk curtains hung from a ceiling laden with spider webs, reaching all the way down to a dusty stone floor partially covered in velvet pillows.

Ran frowned. Laying atop those pillows were the twisted and desiccated husks of the three women he had hypnotized and brought down here the last time he had stopped by. Evidently the prophet had tired of them.

The prophet never actually asked for women victims when he had requested "sacrificial materials" from the vampire lords, but Ran had made assumptions and drawn conclusions, snatching up some of the finer-looking deflowered women he could find in his usual hunting grounds to give the man. He didn't actually know what the prophet wanted them for, but he'd always find their remains lying at the foot of the prophet's lair looking horribly mutilated and usually mutated.

Of the three corpses below him, one looked incredibly gaunt as if everything save the bones had been drawn from her body, while the other three had bizarrely multi-hued skin with patches of scales and thick, spiny hair.

Ran rolled his eyes. He really hoped that the prophet was at least taking the women before he killed them; otherwise his efforts were going completely to waste.

"Ah... Lord Ran... what can... I do... for you?" The vampire lord straightened as one curtain shifted to the side.

The prophet was a strange man, as Ran imagined people of such persuasion usually were. He wore graying linen robes all the time, and his head was wrapped in bandages to the point that only the man's right eye and a few tufts of greasy hair were exposed. His hands, which he insisted need to be free of obstructions like gloves and bandage wrappings to work his arts, were badly burnt and mangled to the point that Ran really couldn't figure out how the old weirdo could use chopsticks without a finger breaking off.

While it was certainly unappealing, the thing about the prophet that actually disturbed Ran were the bandages. They writhed about constantly, throbbing as if they were concealing a host of small appendages or pulsating hunks of flesh.

One would think that a creature that dealt with partially gutted and dismembered zombies would be more used to such horrifying sights, but Ran had always been a lover of beauty, and in his opinion, if one had enough magic power to peer into the murky depths of the future, well, one could spare a few sparks of mana or whatever to put on a third-rate glamour spell so that you looked like a goddamned human being.

The only other thing of note about the prophet was his crystal. It was a perfectly spherical orb that hovered around him in random uneasy orbits, its interior a constant storm of wild colors. It was only due to the orb, which hovered by no natural means that HE had been able to figure out, that he had given the prophet a chance to prove that his so-called "powers" were real. He had been ecstatic when the prophet's visions had proven accurate, guiding him and all the vampires in Tokyo toward a glorious future of eternal twilight.

Of course, now he was less ecstatic about this particular path.

"Prophet, we have problems," the vampire lord said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Ah, yes... tell me... what's on... your mind," the man said slowly, shoving aside one of the corpses below before tenderly taking a seat on the cushions.

Ran remained standing. "We have come under attack. Repeatedly. We are stretched too thin to effectively defend ourselves, and our enemies seem to be uniting against us faster than we can convert their children to undeath. Tell me, does this fit your vision?"

"Hmmmm... yes, yes... I see..." He paused, his good eye staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Surely you... expected... such a response, yes?"

"I did. Although our enemies have proven far more efficient than expected," the midian growled.

The prophet chuckled, and Ran winced at the deep, raspy noise. "This is... a WAR you fight... vampire king. Your enemies... will be many... the battles... will be many... the losses, too... will be many. But the REWARDS..." The bandages shifted slightly, which was the only indication Ran could see that the old wizard was smiling. "The rewards are... the salvation and... superiority of the... nosferatu."

Ran nodded reluctantly. "Yes. As you have foretold. However, we have suffered considerable losses. What is your counsel?"

The prophet nodded slowly and stood up, his visible eye glazing over slightly as he began his ritual.

The crystal at his side shook, and the maelstrom of colors within grew faster and more violent.

"I see... a man of steel, come to wage war... a mighty warrior with eyes of blue and braided hair, emerging to protect the helpless from your predations... these forces... normally grappling each other... will turn on the vampire nation as one... and reduce it to ash... if they are not stopped."

Ran nodded quickly, entranced.

"A plague of undead you do not command! A storm of iron your fangs cannot pierce and your claws cannot rend! A reptile who slinks through your gates, leaving naught but ruin in his path! Dozens of blades, cutting, cutting, never stopping! A ravenous beast, ever-consuming its enemies! A machine from the stars, fused to a princess of the moon! Warriors from lands now dead and barren! The indomitible human spirit! Horrors of science, manifest in a swarm of talons and teeth!" The prophet gasped as his rant reached a crescendo, and his breathing returned to its normal, sedate pace. "One by one... these trials... will test... the vampire nation... will your... people survive?"

"We will win, or we will perish from this Earth once and for all, and leave the human cowards with their coveted 'peace'," Ran snarled, his fangs lengthening.

"Very admirable... but others... may not agree." The prophet grinned. "But there... is hope... great hope... for the nosferatu... a great ally..."

The vampire lord nodded, intrigued. Honestly, he though the prophet himself was a pretty good ally, but it sounded like he'd need all the help he could get.

"The pricess of flames... will be your salvation..." the prophet said, his crystal ball floating in front of his forehead and then flaring a bright, rich red.

Energies coalesced from the jewels, and an image appeared over the ball, flickering before Ran's eyes.

"Find... this girl... TURN her... she can... lead you to... the savior... your champion..."

Ran nodded eagerly, burning the image of the girl in his mind. "I will do as you say, prophet. Your advice has never failed me thus far." Then he frowned. "But there is one other matter. You see-"

Before the vampire lord could continue, the prophet laid a hand amiably on his shoulder.

"Lay off... the DAPC... until you get... the flame girl..." the prophet's single eye looked quite serious as he said this.

Ran sweatdropped. "How did you know what-" he trailed off as the prophet raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Right. Prophet. Duh."

"Seriously... don't mess... with those guys... bunch of... lunatics..." the prophet mumbled

"Okay, okay, fine. Then I take my leave of you." 

Ran left the room quickly and promptly jumped straight up through the ceiling, phasing through it and then flying into the night sky.

Partially because he wanted to get out of that dusty hellhole, and partially because he had a new lead on how to get his shadow war back on track.

'Hmmm... I should probably find a few more girls for the prophet. I think he finished with the last batch.'

Smirking to himself, Ran made plans to visit the local bar on the way back and adjusted his course. A quick snack was in order... and then he had errands to run.

Vampires destroyed: 14  
Secondary plotlines sufficiently alluded to: 2  
Innocent people killed "off-stage" for storyline purposes: 5  
New vacation homes purchased by Mamoru's surgeon: 2

End Chapter 8


	9. The Purge

"In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."  
- Albert Camus

"I really don't get this one at all. Does that mean that all the smart people are just victims?"  
- Kyle Tekai

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

Please note that once AGAIN, has re-vamped their punctuation restrictions in what feels like their most determined attempt to piss me off yet. I'm changing the formatting to show Usagi's computer readouts in bold, but as always readers are encouraged to read each chapter on my home page rather than the communal train wreck.

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **computer readouts**, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 9  
The Purge

"Hurry! Hurry!"

A young man wearing dark street clothes ushered a pair of other boys along into an alleyway as the sound of police sirens grew louder in the distance, spurring them onward.

"This is ridiculous! We didn't even get a chance to feed!" the pair mumbled as they bunched up their legs, vaulting upward a full three stories before they grabbed onto the edge of the roof and pulled themselves up.

The first man scowled, revealing his unusually pointed incisors as he heard the progress of the sirens.

He was incredibly relieved as a girl suddenly rounded the corner, her lips still stained red with fresh blood.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said nervously as the woman halted. "It was stupid! We can find other targets! This is no time to be killing cops!"

The girl flinched, and then her expression hardened. "What was I supposed to do? It's either kill or be killed from now on, and I was starving!"

The sirens kept approaching, and the man swallowed. "Oh, whatever. Come on!" He jumped on a wall and then deflected off of it, landing on the opposite roof as the female midian leapt straight up.

The other two vampires were crouching together on the edge of the roof, peeking over into the streets. "Dude, are you sure we can't just eat 'em? They're probably not even armed!"

"NO! No, we can't!" The oldest of the group snarled. "You idiot, that's the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place! If we touch the cops, they'll hunt us down!"

The girl snorted. "When did you become such a coward?"

"When did you decide to throw your life away for a convenient snack?" He snapped back. "Look, the only way we'll survive is by hiding out and not drawing attention to ourselves! We have to lay low until Ran and the rest of those morons get themselves killed, and then hopefully things will cool down a little bit."

"I dunno man," one of the other boys said nervously. "Isuka isn't gonna like this..."

"Isuka won't be among the undead for much longer if he doesn't follow our example."

"I didn't give up my humanity to be hunted down like an animal!" The girl said angrily.

The young man gave her a leaden stare. "And I didn't give it up at all. It was taken from me. But if I have to live with it, I'm going to live with it as long as I can manage. If any of you are tired of this life, you're free to leave whenever you want."

They were all silent for a few moments, and one of the boys sighed as the noise of police sirens started to fade away into the distance. "So... what now? Where do we go from here?"

"First, we need to feed to keep our strength up," the eldest of the group said decisively. "But attacking random people can be problematic. Do any of you know anyone in this area?"

"What? We're going to go after people we know?" one of the boys asked nervously. He had several friends in the area who had all been more successful than he in finding romance before meeting a vampire, but as a rule vampires usually avoided killing people whom they had known and liked in their previous life. An unspoken rule, certainly, but vampires didn't abandon their memories or all of their emotions upon being turned.

"It's the best chance we've got. Then we can use their place and-"

_Crash!_

The sound of a pair of hinges shattering was all the warning the midians had before the door to the roof access stairway flew across the length of the roof and smashed into the apparent leader of the group, knocking him over roughly.

"Wh-What the hell?!"

The boy closest to the roof access glanced over at his friend as the vampire bounced off his hands and flipped to his feet, and then immediately turned back toward the doorway to see this new intruder.

That boy's moment of distraction cost him dearly, as he found himself staring down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.

_BLAM!_ The young nosferatu's head vanished in a burst of blood and bone, and his body was sent spiraling to the side from the force of the blast.

"Yokiro!" The girl screamed, feeling fear and rage well up within her with equal passion. "You bastard! We'll kill you!"

The newcomer, who was a large foreign man wearing a trenchcoat and a large crucifix around his neck, took a few puffs on the cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips as the vampires glared hatefully at him.

"Who the hell are you?!" The leader of the little group snarled, slipping gradually into a crouch.

The foreigner didn't respond immediately, tossing his shotgun to the side neglectfully before placing both hands on a large object wrapped in dirty blankets that he held over his shoulder.

"Me? I am no one," he replied, his voice heavily tainted with a Russian accent. "An insignificant servant of the lord, a mere janitor come to wipe this filth from the dark corners of the city."

Before he had even finished that sentence, the second boy was already charging for him, his hand reaching to tear the throat out of the interloper.

_Crack!_ The bundle came down hard on the back of that vampire's skull before he completed his attack, shattering his brain case and smashing him into the roof.

"Into the abyss, abomination," the Russian intoned, lifting one foot into the air above the gasping undead. _CRUNCH!_

The female of the group began to charge forward before she found herself being yanked back by the only other remaining midian.

"Come on! Run!" The leader shouted, trying to drag her forward.

"NO! Let go!" She snarled, her anger overcoming her fear. "We have to-"

The boy, situated as he was trying to pull his last unliving companion away from the apparently insanely dangerous man, was in a position to see the brief wind-up as said man dashed forward and swung his heavy bundle at them like a club.

_BWAM!_ As the boy ducked, the girl sailed to the side, crashing into the short wall on the edge of the roof with enough force to break through it and roll out into the sky above the city streets.

The leader switched immediately from retreat to attack as the blow missed his head, and slashed for the newcomer's throat.

The Russian didn't even flinch as a thin spray of blood spurted from his neck, but instead punched for the vampire's head, missing by a hair as the creature hopped back.

"You think you can take us all on?" The midian snarled. "You're in over your head, human!"

The Russian took a long drag from his cigarette, then gazed long and hard at the vampire boy.

"Human? You say this like it is an insult," he mumbled, idly rubbing the shallow scratches on his neck.

"Just shut up! You won't get away with this!"

The gunman stood up straight, shifting his bundle onto one shoulder while fingering the cross hanging from his neck with the other. "It is not I who seeks salvation from earthly vengeance, creature. I do not hide in shadows. I do not prey on the weak and flee from the strong. My soul, stained as it is with blood and violence, is at peace. It is your weak, ashen spirit that hangs in the balance, clinging pitifully to this world."

Stepping back toward the shotgun lying on the roof, he slammed a foot down onto the very edge of the stock, sending the weapon flipping into the air and into his waiting hand. "I will release you from your torment tonight, pathetic creature."

"Fat chance, lurch! You'll have to catch me first!" The midian taunted, suddenly leaping away and grabbing onto the wall of the building adjacent to them before scrambling up toward the next roof.

Rayden Shikodan, infamous vigilante and dubiously Catholic crusader, snapped the sawed-off shotgun open and held it under his arm as he drew out a single shotgun shell. This particular cylinder was pure white, save a crudely-drawn sword sketched on the side in black pen.

With his free hand, Rayden calmly loaded the shell into the shotgun, grabbed the stock, and then flicked his wrist, snapping the weapon closed.

Then, taking another drag from his cigarette, he lifted the weapon up, aiming toward the roof and just to the left of the vampire staring down at him...

Up on the adjacent roof, the young vampire frowned in confusion as he saw the Russian man load his shotgun rather than pursuing.

He was reasonably perplexed when he saw the gunman aim up at him; at that range, a shotgun's burst would be next to useless.

Still, he was determined not to make any stupid mistakes by underestimating the stranger, and promptly turned to his right before he started to dash away.

_BLAM!_ "Hrk!" The solid slug fired by the gun bored into his side unerringly, the outer casing of the bullet disintegrating from the ignition.

The nosferatu staggered to his knees, his eyes widening as he felt absolute agony blossom within his chest. "Gah! UWAH!! GLAAAAAUGH!!"

Within his ribcage, dozens of small silver shards scythed into his lungs, heart, and other, less important organs, having been scattered from a tiny secondary charge.

"AAAGH! NYAAAAAAH!!" The boy collapsed on the surface of the roof, blood leaking from his mouth as small fissures started to appear all over his body. "YAAAAAAUGH!! UWAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"

Down below, Rayden calmly slipped the sawed-off shotgun back into his coat as he watched the vampire break apart.

Taking the burnt-out stub of his cigarette out of his mouth, he took a moment to crush it in his palm, and then he once again took hold of the crucifix around his neck.

"Lord, take pity on these weak, foul souls that turn to the darkness and defy the light. They are but insolent mortals driven mad with thoughts of power and drawn from the path of righteousness. May your mercy see their tainted spirits to their destination."

Then he turned away, staring at the breach in the wall surrounding the roof where the vampiress had been smashed into.

"Amen." Hefting his bundle over his shoulder, he stepped over to the edge of the roof, and then hopped down.

* * *

The sound of traffic and chirping birds greeted Usagi as she blinked in surprise at waking up. Long lines of code, status reports and generic messages (complete with an ominous Wraith Labs copyright note) scrolled across her field of vision, prompting the young cyborg to shake her head, disoriented.

She had tried her hardest to avoid judging her new abilities and qualities now that she was mostly machine largely for fear that she would start enjoying her current form but she had to admit it was kind of nice waking up entirely refreshed and active, rather than groggy and tired. Although she was still getting used to the little booting procedure she went through in the morning, it was far more convenient than dragging herself out of bed in the morning, or alternatively, dashing off at full speed because she was late.

Pushing herself off of Ranmas guest bed now her bed, she supposed she promptly headed toward the closet.

_Thud!_ Ouch!

After tripping on one of the many yet-to-be-unpacked boxes scattered around her new room and falling on her face, Usagi remembered that her closet was mostly empty at the moment, and started crawling about on her hands and knees trying to find the box that held her uniform.

Awww... why didnt I mark these or anything? The blonde cyborg mumbled as she started rifling through one box and finding only dozens of socks.

Scratching her head, Usagi concentrated briefly and then activated her X-ray scope, grumbling some more about how ridiculous she felt using X-ray vision to get dressed in the morning.

Found it! Smiling, she stripped off her pajama top.

Naturally, that was when the door opened.

Usagi-chan, are you rea- Ranma promptly froze as Usagi flushed.

EEEEEEEEK!! Reacting on instinct, Usagi didnt even realize that her new landlord had already closed the door before her wrist opened up into an energy cannon and then spat a sizzling bolt of plasma in his general direction.

_Bwoom!_ Ranma winced as he watched the door in front of him collapse into broken cinders.

Usagi likewise winced as she realized what shed done, sweatdropping at the sight of Ranma standing in front of her room, holding a scorched doorknob.

Then she remembered that she was still shirtless, and quickly wrapped herself in her blanket.

... So... Ranma began awkwardly. ... Knocking. What do we think?

I like knocking, Usagi said quickly. Lets do that.

Yeah. Okay. Ranma scratched the back of his head nervously, then jabbed a thumb down the hall. Im gonna go make some breakfast. Why dont you finish getting dressed, and then we can pretend this never happened?

Yes! Id like that! Usagi said, nodding rapidly.

Okay! See ya in a bit. The pigtailed man quickly turned and scurried away, contemplating the consequences of what had just happened. While it was kind of nice that Usagi didn't seem to be holding these occasional awkward confrontations against him (certainly meeting for the first time when Ranma was fondling her couldn't have left the best first impression), she really needed to tone down the lethality of her feminine reflexes; perhaps it was just him, but Ranma really didn't think that someone deserved to get shot just for walking in on a girl while she was changing.

Usagi was having similar thoughts, berating herself for nearly killing Ranma on accident.

'I've got to get it together!' she thought as she slipped on an undershirt and then put on her uniform. 'I'm not a bumbling high school superheroine anymore! I'm Usagi Tsukino, protector of the innocent! Public defender of love and justice!' Turning sharply toward the full-length mirror on the wall, the blonde cyborg admired her new outfit. 'Today is my first day as a super-elite crime-fighter! I have to make a good impression!'

* * *

"What are you so uptight about, Tsukino? Have a seat and grab a controller," Snake offered, leaning back on the couch set up in the DAPC main lobby as over-dramatic theme to Super Smash Bros. Brawl reverberated through the room.

Usagi sweatdropped as she watched Snake relax while Kyle and Tiro argued over the virtues of and drawbacks of various changes in the characters since this game's last incarnation. "So this is what super-elite crime-fighters do all day? Sit around and play Nintendo?"

"We used to have a Playstation, also," Snake offered as he scrolled through Kirby's varioius color schemes, "but I'm not willing to spend a penny of my armory funds on the monstrosity that Sony had the nerve to release as a next-generation system."

Usagi frowned and turned to Ranma, who merely turned away and pretended nothing was happening. "Huh. I wonder where Captain Takami is?"

"She's downstairs," Snake said. "She probably told us why, but I was thinking about pizza at the time."

Tiro and Kyle immediately froze in mid-argument.

"... Aw, great. Now I'M thinking about pizza too!" Kyle complained.

Tiro immediately stood up on the couch and planted one foot on the backrest while pointing toward the exit. "TO THE NEAREST ITALIAN RESTAURANT!!"

Usagi yelped and hopped aside as the three men stampeded toward the front entrance carelessly, each of them already arguing over toppings.

"Uhm... is today a holiday or something?" Usagi asked, confused. "I mean, I know what everyone says about you guys being totally unreliable, but I've been here often enough that I know that isn't true."

"A holiday? Sort of," Ranma hedged as he gestured for Usagi to follow him down the hall. "It's Wednesday."

The young woman seemed confused by this statement, as most would agree was more than reasonable. "So? Wednesday isn't a holiday."

"You have a lot to learn about working for the DAPC," Ranma chided as he pushed a button on the wall, causing the doors to the elevator leading to the sub-levels to slide open. "We need time to relax and stuff. People aren't machines," he began to lecture, before freezing in realization. "Uh... present company excluded, of course. Er... wait, let me rephrase that."

"I think I know what you're saying," Usagi offered as she and Ranma stepped into the elevator. "But why Wednesday and Friday? What about the weekends?"

"We can't take weekends off," Ranma mumbled, scratching the back of his head under his pigtail. "Oddly enough, most supernatural beings, evil scientists, and aliens either have day jobs or just have better things to do during the week, so most attacks, hauntings, and suspicious murders happen on the weekends."

Usagi frowned. "Hmph. The stupid youma were never that considerate."

"Right. So someone decided that we'd get Wednesdays and Fridays to do what we want and unwind. Of course, we've been under attack by vampires recently, so we're trying not to leave the HQ unattended, but some of us still lose focus pretty easily, I guess."

Usagi nodded as the elevator shakily ground to a halt. "I guess that's okay, then. Most of the time they're not like that, right?"

"Ha ha ha!" Ranma laughed cheerfully, sweating nervously as he peeked into the next room to search for Asuka among the containment vaults. "Well, we-LOOK! There's the captain! Hi, Captain!"

* * *

Asuka turned away from the cage of silver bars she had been looking through, and raised an eyebrow when she saw Ranma rushing toward her with Usagi in tow.

"Hmmm... okay, I think this could work."

Ranma stopped when he heard this. "What? What could work?" He noticed right away that Seras and some dark guy he didn't quite remember were with Asuka, standing in front of the cell that contained the captured vampire.

Seras decided to take the initiative and stumbled forward to speak. "Sheee, wah foun gauh vanpahr feeh dah blub, an'-" _Thwack!_

A fist upside the head sent the drunk brainiac spiraling away into a content heap next to the opened vault door.

Asuka took a moment to huff in annoyance at the DA's medical officer, and then addressed Ranma herself. "We've got a problem. Our prisoner is starving to death." She pointed into the cell, where Ranma could see the wasted, emaciated form of the vampire sitting in the middle of the cell. His formerly lush, brilliant hair was a tangled, curled mess, and his skin, normally a gentle if palid shade that looked soft and inviting, had turned ghastly white and was cracked, like wasted earth.

"I don't really see why that's a problem, but if it is, why don't we feed 'im?" Ranma asked gruffly, crossing his arms over his chest. Normally he was more compassionate, but he had seen the horrors these monsters inflicted regularly, the lives they destroyed without a thought, and these events had totally stripped away any sympathy for the creatures. As far as he was concerned, the monster that the DAPC held in the sub-levels was only worthy of unlife so long as the DAPC could extract information from it. Ranma actually felt that starvation, from an inability to massacre and feast upon humans after being imprisoned by them, was quite a fitting end.

"Well, it is a problem. Putting aside whatever abuses Snake has been inflicting upon the freak behind my back, I'm not comfortable with the idea of a prisoner starving to death on my watch," Asuka said firmly. "As for why we don't feed him, these two idiots squandered what little blood we were able to commandeer from the hospital."

Usagi frowned uneasily. "So... if you don't have any blood on hand..."

"Oh, we have plenty of blood on hand," Asuka corrected the cyborg. "The problems is that it's currently in use."

The blonde promptly paled while Ranma sighed. "Yeah, I figured it was something like that. You need a donor, huh?"

The bluette nodded, a smirk on her face. "Right on. And since you lose considerable quantities of blood on a regular basis and still manage to stay on your feet, that makes you the perfect volunteer."

Ranma nodded, apparently resigned to his charity.

"Ranma-kun! Wait! Are you really going to do that?" Usagi asked, alarmed.

"It's no big deal. I won't give him enough to really hurt me," the pigtailed man said flippantly. "Let's just get it over with."

Asuka nodded. "Great. Since Seras is out cold, this other guy who keeps following us around can draw the blood and then-"

"Nah, no need," Ranma said carelessly as he approached the cell and stopped just outside the gate. "Just open it up. I've got this."

Yamma, Asuka, and Usagi all shared a grimace.

"That sounds like a spectacularly bad idea," Asuka deadpanned. "I advise instead that you take the five minutes to do this already horrific and degenerate task in a safe and sanitary manner."

Were it not a Wednesday, Ranma would have gladly complied. However, while the other officers usually enjoyed shirking their official duties at will and slacking off, Ranma instead enjoyed the autonomy to do things in his usual reckless, short-sighted manner that had led to so many catastrophes in his youth.

"Don't worry about it, I can take this guy. Besides, I've been bitten before; it's not all that bad. C'mon, open it up!"

Asuka spent a moment rubbing her forehead, and then walked over the cell door controls. "Fine. Tsukino, wait with me at the entrance; if anything goes wrong, blast the freak to dust, got it?"

"C-Can't you just order Ranma-kun not to do this?" Usagi asked nervously as her wrist split apart with a blast of steam, revealing the glowing barrel of her plasma blaster.

"Of course I could, but I don't really feel like stamping down on Saotome-san's ego right now," Asuka mumbled as she input a code. "Besides, I DO expect that our martial arts star can handle a weak, starved, half-dead young vampire on his own."

"Of course I can," Ranma said negligently as the gate before him slowly started rising into the top of the entryway. "You're making a big fuss out of nothing."

* * *

Certainly, it should have been no big trial for Ranma to donate blood to the imprisoned creature, even through the questionable process of stepping into an enclosure with the vampire and feeding it directly.

Walking up to the center of the room, the martial artist didn't waste any effort on tact or ceremony. He walked right up to the creature, poked it in the shoulder, and then held his arm out.

"Here. Just a quick bite. And if you give me any trouble, I'll smash your teeth in. Then you'll starve to death anyway," Ranma snapped.

The vampire Garo turned slowly, his head pounding and his vision swimming.

Were he in his normal state of mind, the midian likely would have refused and simply starved to death, suffering the slow, painful demise of malnourishment rather than the arbitrary and humiliating torment of being at the DAPC's whim.

Being on the edge of starvation, however, had weakened his grip on his mind, and rendered him much more susceptible to the vampire's bestial instincts. Among those instincts were unquestioning submission to stronger creatures in order to survive.

As he was clearly being offered a chance to continue unliving, Garo wavered only for a moment before he silently and timidly reached for Ranma's wrist.

Ranma bravely forced himself not to flinch as the nosferatu opened its mouth, its teeth lengthening into needle-sharp fangs, and he managed to retain his stern, detached expression even as Garo closed trembling jaws around his arm, puncturing skin and digging into the soft, fluid-rich flesh beneath.

"Ghhgh!" Ranma grunted slightly as the vampire began to drink, already fighting the urge to tear his arm away; although the feeling of having his blood siphoned away didn't exactly hurt (though getting bitten certainly did), it was extremely unpleasant, to say the least.

"All right, all right, that's enough!" The pigtailed man snapped after a couple of seconds, yanking his arm away and nearly taking the vampire's teeth with it. "Calm down, you overgrown flea! Geez!"

Even as Ranma stepped back, however, Garo collapsed onto his hands and knees, his body convulsing weakly as blood dribbled from his mouth.

"The hell?" Asuka mumbled as she watched the creature spasm while the various humans (and near-humans) in the room stared awkwardly. "What's wrong with it now?"

"Uh... is it dying?" Usagi asked, scratching her head. "Is Ranma-kun's blood poisonous or something?"

Asuka frowned. "Well... Saotome's blood does contain a number of powerful microorganisms, but I can't fathom what they're doing to the vampire."

Ranma backed away uneasily, rubbing his arm as he watched the undead predator writhe on the ground. Though the midian LOOKED like he was in considerable pain, Garo was also regenerating rapidly; Ranma could already see the vampire's hair darken and the numerous cracks and scars in its skin sealing before his eyes.

"Guh! Grrghn!" Garo grunted as his eyes fluttered open, the last of his strength returning to him at last. He looked up at his confused captors, and then glanced down at the floor where numerous droplets of Ranma's precious life fluid had fallen.

Ranma winced and started backing away as the midian started licking the spilled blood off the floor desperately. "Ewww... was he THAT hungry?"

Unbidden, Usagi's scanner activated and began targeting Garo within a blinking red reticle. **Warning! Vampire power level increasing rapidly! Advise target containment immediately!**

"What's happening to it?" The cyborg asked nervously.

**Target's biometric scan shows a significant increase in cellular respiration; target's body has entered a hyper-regenerative state. The volatility of the power shift has caused minor trauma to the target in this state.**

"Haaah..." Garo let out a long breath as he lifted his face off the floor, desperately cleaning his teeth with his tongue to absorb the last few precious bits of blood. "More... MORE!"

"No more!" Ranma protested, holding his punctured arm while scowling. "You had your snack, now back off!"

With a bestial snarl, Garo launched forward toward the martial artist, snapping his teeth ferociously as he grabbed for the man's neck.

Ranma slugged the midian in the cheek before it could touch him, knocking it away, but was quite surprised when the vampire landed on all fours and then leapt up onto the ceiling rather than rolling away weakly or lying there stunned.

"Geez, what did I do to it?" Ranma asked as he watched the undead man cling to the ceiling like a spider and clamber toward him. "This guy was ready to lay down and die a second ago!"

"Give me more!" The nosferatu demanded, his eyes flaring a brilliant red as his gaunt frame swelled to its former, healthier stature. "I'll drain you of every last drop!" With his feet still clinging to the ceiling, Garo tucked into a crouch, ready to spring at his donor once again.

_Blam! Blam!_ The vampire darted away as Asuka opened fire, running full tilt across the length of the cell ceiling as the two women at the door aimed their weapons.

Ranma frowned, then turned briefly. "Captain! Close the gate!"

"What? With you still inside?" Asuka asked through clenched teeth, snapping off another two shots as the midian bounced about the interior of the cell wildly. Usagi hadn't fired her own weapon yet, but Asuka was rather glad; Usagi's weaponry tended to be the sort more suitable to vaporizing tanks rather than shooting down undead.

"I got this! C'mon Captain!" Ranma shouted, bouncing backward as the vampire blurred toward him with a quick slash before darting away cautiously.

"Dammit, Saotome!" Asuka slammed her hand on the keypad controlling the secondary lock, and the silver-plated gate promptly slid shut, prompting Usagi to yelp and jump back.

'Just a little longer...' Ranma licked his lips as he stepped backward toward the gate, plotting the vampire's jumps in his mind. 'If I were crazy fast... and I AM... I would jump at me just... about... NOW!'

A hand stabbing toward his face was all the warning he received, but the martial artist was already in motion, ducking low as he performed a roundhouse sweep under the desperate vampire.

"Gwah?" Garo felt the surge of sensation and acuity that he had felt upon feeding suddenly sour as he felt his legs buckle and release his body to the cruel grip of gravity, sending him flying into the thick criss-crossed bars separating him from sweet, sweet freedom.

_Clang!_ "UGWAAUGH!!" The midian screamed fiercely as smoke poured from his painful impact with the high-purity silver, testament to the intense burning he felt all over his face and upper body.

With a pitiful grunt, Garo pushed himself away, gasping painfully.

_Thud! Whang!_ Ranma promptly planted his foot in the back of the vampire's head, slamming it back into the gate and eliciting another agonized scream. "I SAID not to give me any trouble, you blood-suckin' freak!" The pigtailed man growled. After a few seconds, he removed his foot and then grabbed the vampire by the arm before yanking him away and throwing him back into the cell proper. "Now shut up and lie down!"

The vampire did in fact lie down, if only because he was in too much agony to move, though he continued groaning mournfully even as Ranma glared at him.

* * *

_Clank!_ The gate slid back into the ceiling, and Asuka shook her head as Ranma stepped out. "That was far more annoying than it had to be."

Usagi breathed a huge sigh of relief as her wrist stopped glowing with energy that she was too afraid to release. "That was scary..."

"What? The monster got fed and I got out just fine," Ranma protested, rubbing his wounded arm.

"Of course. What was I thinking, trying to accomplish that in a safe and responsible manner?" The bluette mumbled. "Now if we're done wasting time and ammo, we can get on to more important things, such as getting the Incredible Bionic Blonde here settled in."

"Uh? Oh! Me! Right!" Usagi said, straightening quickly and then saluting. "Officer Tsukino, reporting for duty!"

"Swell. Follow me," Asuka deadpanned, pressing a key that caused the massive vault door to close on the vampire's cell. "Normally I wouldn't start the tour with the sub-levels, but since we're already here I might as well."

Stepping out into the hall beyond the main lobby, the police captain gestured to the numerous smaller doors that were found all over the labyrinth, Usagi and Ranma falling into step behind her.

"The sub-levels are a group of reinforced, underground complexes that were only recently reintegrated into the DAPC headquarters proper. These tunnels are the only remotely safe place to keep organisms, weapons, poisons, or items that we don't choose to destroy for whatever reason. There are numerous vaults and labs down here for imprisoning monsters and holding dangerous materials, but in all honesty, you probably won't be seeing much of this area."

"Why? Is that because you'll want me in the field all the time?" Usagi asked.

"It's probably because we don't do much imprisoning or holding," Ranma clarified, shrugging. "We usually just blow up whatever we see as a threat."

"Saotome's correct," Asuka affirmed, nodding. "There was a time when researching the strange and paranormal was more important than preserving the safety of the public, but those days are gone now. As a rule, I try to keep our intake of prisoners to a minimum." Then she gave Ranma a hard stare. "Of course, we used to keep samples of certain potent biochemical weapons down here for study, but we stopped doing that too ever since SOMEONE started guzzling retrovirus like cheap beer."

"Huh?" Usagi scratched her head, confused as she saw Ranma chuckle nervously and divert his attention elsewhere.

"It's nothing. Moving on," Asuka said sharply before she pointed to a large, circular space at the end of the hall. Within the room were several large, metal capsules with old, deteriorated labels and patches of rust. "The other reason we try not to spend too much time down here is that we're not quite sure how safe it is," she admitted. "Sure, the vaults are top-notch, but then some of our officers can do a lot of damage without really meaning to."

She raised an eyebrow as she glanced back at Usagi. "Present company definitely included." As Usagi sweatdropped, Asuka turned back toward the room. "To make matters worse, we found several organisms down here when we integrated the sub-levels that were apparently imprisoned here and forgotten. Without knowing what they are, we can't easily dispose of them, so we pretty much just leave them alone and hope nothing happens to wake them up."

"Hmmm..." Usagi scratched her chin as she slowly glanced at each metal capsule in the room. Each one had several cables attached to it, and a cylinder on top that sported many glowing lights. Several of the cables were torn or frayed, however, and the first of the capsules had a huge crack in the important-looking cylinder at top.

**Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Zerg larvae." Status: Deceased. Remains primarily consist of carapace composed of heavy alloys. Approximate date of termination: 1980 A.D. Threat index: 0.**

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Velociraptor." Status: Cryogenic stasis. Scans suggest that this creature was subjected to heavy genetic manipulation before being sealed. Cryogenic life support functioning at 62 percent. Threat index: 2.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Asgard." Status: Deceased. Remains suggest that this organism was killed due to the slow decay of the capsule's cryogenic life support systems. Threat index: 0.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Prinny." Status: Alive, but miserable. Scans cannot make any sense of this creature's biology. Cryogenic life support has failed, but somehow the organism remains alive, though comatose. Threat index: 3. 4, if thrown.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Symbiote." Status: Cryogenic stasis. Scans register a constant level of cellular agitation despite being in stasis due to the fluid, metamorphic nature of this organism's form. Cryogenic life support functioning at 37 percent. Threat index: 6.

"Tsukino-kun? You okay? You're sort of spacing out there," Asuka mumbled as the blonde cyborg stared hard at each containment unit.

"Oh! Uh, sorry," Usagi said, rubbing her head as she turned away from the room. "I was just curious, that's all."

"This is probably one of the worst rooms to be curious in," Ranma mumbled. "There's some dangerous stuff in here."

"Right. Let's move on," Asuka insisted, turning around and gesturing for her subordinates to follow back down the hall. "Next I'll show you the locker rooms, offices, and armory. Then we can get down to business."

"Why bother showing her the armory? She IS an armory!" Ranma noted as he took up the rear once again.

"Hell, I dunno. Maybe she runs out of ammo or something," Asuka reasoned. "Besides that, it's just an important room, right?"

Usagi remained respectfully silent as the more experienced officers argued about her place in the department hierarchy, and gave the vault holding the vampire a long, curious stare as she followed Asuka into the elevator.

Were her attention not distracted, she probably would have been the only one to notice when one of the containment units down at the end of the hall started sparking ominously, eliciting a brief burst of electric arcs before two of the hoses spontaneously popped off of the top of the cylinder.

_Shoomf!_ As it was, however, Usagi was worrying about other things as the elevator doors slipped shut.

"Do I have to carry a gun? They're so loud and scary..." Usagi flushed as Asuka rolled her eyes.

"Putting aside what other 'loud and scary' things you're carrying right now, no, I can't imagine you'd need to carry a gun." Then the police captain rubbed her chin. "Though I WILL need to run you through some tests to get a better idea of what you can do."

"T-T-T-Tests?" The blonde cyborg recoiled immediately, looking horrified. "You can't be serious! Even after getting out of college, I still have to take tests?!"

Asuka sweatdropped and glanced at Ranma. "Yeah, you and Snake found a real winner here, I can tell."

"Heh heh," Ranma chuckled gently and put a calming hand on Usagi's shoulder. "Usagi-chan, calm down. These tests are very different from the ones you take in school."

Usagi seemed to relax slightly, but still looked suspiciously at Asuka, as if being cautious would in any way affect what was about to happen. "Really? How different?"

"For my own peace of mind, I wouldn't dare give you a written test," the police captain deadpanned. "These tests will allow me to measure your physical abilities, not your mental ones. I've largely given up on hiring smart people."

Despite the admission, Asuka still had to fight down her annoyance when she saw Usagi sigh in relief. 'Is it worse that these people are such morons, or that they're all so comfortable being that way?'

"Okay then!" Usagi said, gripping her hands into fists. In all honesty, she wasn't that confident in her physical abilities either, but was herself curious about what her new body could do. 'This is it! It's a new beginning for me here, so I have to try hard to give it my all! I wonder what the tests will be like?'

* * *

"Test one will involve multiple target eradication. Your objective is to destroy every marker as quickly as possible," Asuka explained as she looked over her clipboard with a stopwatch in hand.

Usagi looked around the HQ training room uncertainly; scattered about the relatively large area were numerous carboard ring targets, some of them held up by posts or chains, while others were mounted on the ceiling or floor.

"Okay... how should I do that?" Usagi asked uncertainly.

"Don't care," Asuka said bluntly. "This room is heavily reinforced, so feel free to use anything less powerful than high-yield explosives. Other than that, your only concern is damaging every one of these targets as quickly as you can."

Ranma grinned and gave the cyborg girl a thumbs-up. "This'll be easy for you! Just concentrate and wipe them all out with one shot!"

Usagi gulped as Asuka prepped the stopwatch. 'One shot? Can I really... yes! I can do this!'

Asuka frowned briefly, and then took a few steps farther away from Usagi before she pressed the timer on the stopwatch. "Begin!"

"Haaah..." Usagi took a deep breath, and then squeezed her eyes shut as she crossed her arms over her chest.

_Shnk! Chunk!_ Asuka took a few more steps back as two small racks of vertically-stacked mini missiles slid up out of Usagi's shoulders.

"Okay!" Usagi suddenly shouted, throwing her arms apart as she fired the entire volley.

_Foosh! Foosh! Fwoosh! Fsssh!_ Two at a time, the missiles at the bottom of the rack launched and veered off toward their targets right before the racks slid back into Usagi's shoulders far enough to move the next missiles into firing position.

"Whoa! Look out!" Asuka shouted as she jumped toward the wall, wincing as a pair of the small projectiles veered upward in an arc that was way too close to where she had been standing.

_Boom! Boom! Bwakoom! Blam!_ The police captain could only squeeze her eyes shut as the chain of detonations filled the room with the flare of blazing explosions.

'Okaaaay. Missile barrage. I'll give her points for that. And she is following the rules of the test. Though common sense would dictate WARNING us before turning the entire damn room into a blast zone.'

Usagi winced as she heard the last of her missiles detonate on the far wall, and then let out a small sigh as she cracked her eyes open.

Upon seeing the entire room obscured by rapidly fading smoke, she smiled. "Yes! I did it!"

Upon seeing the room not obscured after the ventilation fans spent a few seconds sucking smoke out of the area, her jaw dropped. "What? I MISSED? I missed ALL OF THEM?"

Asuka sweatdropped heavily as she looked at the dozens of scorch marks all over the walls of the room, none of which were centered on a target. "Well, technically, you burned some of the targets from near misses, which count as hits in this exercise..." then she glanced to the side. "Plus, you nailed Saotome pretty good. That's normally really hard to do, though I'm not going to congratulate you for it."

"Wh-Wh-What?!" Usagi whirled around, and her face turned white when she saw Ranma slowly standing up, his uniform covered in soot and ash. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to do that! I don't know what went wrong! I'mjustreallynewtothistargetingsystemandIguessitworksdifferentlyonabunchoftargetsthanonetarget! WhenIuseditonthevampireladybeforeitseemedtobeallright! ThenagainIhadmyeyesclosedthistimethatwasreallystupidI'msosorryRanma-kunareyouokayshouldI-"

"Stop, stop, please," Ranma mumbled, chuckling as he dusted himself off. "I'm fine, really. _Cough!_ None of the missiles hit me head-on. _Cough!_ Besides, I wasn't paying enough attention and got caught by surprise. That was my fault."

_Sniffle!_ Upon seeing Usagi's large, tearful eyes, Ranma forced himself to stop coughing and started dusting himself off faster. "Honest! I'm fine! Totally fine! I was going to change out of this jacket anyway! You barely even scratched me!"

"But... are... are you sure you're okay?" Usagi asked, her eyes shaking delicately.

Ranma, who felt his body trying to eject ash from his lungs once more, immediately clammed up and started nodding rapidly.

"Oh, thank goodness! I was really scared!" The blonde cyborg said, planting a hand over her heart.

"Tsukino-kun, not that I don't appreciate your concern for your fellow officer," Asuka began, "I mean, around here it's surprisingly rare to find someone who will even bother to apologize after they nearly kill a companion..." Then she held up the stopwatch. "... But the test isn't over yet."

"What? You're still timing me?" Usagi asked, shocked. "But Ranma-kun got hurt! Shouldn't we stop and start over? Or at least pause?"

"In the field a fight doesn't stop so you can take care of your friends," Asuka said, crossing her arms over her chest. "And Ranma wasn't seriously injured anyway, so it's not like we need to have him carried to the infirmary. Besides all that, this test isn't just to judge your combat efficiency. I'm also observing how you handle damage control and mistakes."

Usagi blinked, then gulped. "Uh... and how am I doing?"

"I can see why they booted you out of college," Asuka deadpanned. "By the way, the clock is STILL ticking, you know."

"What? Ah! Sorry! Sorry!"

* * *

Ranma grunted as he finished wiping his face with a wet towel, and then glanced over to where Asuka was grimacing at her clipboard. "So, she didn't do that badly overall, right?"

Asuka rolled her eyes and tucked the clipboard under her arm. "Well, she scored points thanks to her concern for your health... which compensated nicely for her being completely helpless to do anything to help." Then she frowned. "By the way, you're looking a bit pale..."

"Yeah... I didn't know this before, but apparently when your body wants to cough up dirt and smoke, it's a pretty bad idea to hold it in instead," the pigtailed man said weakly. "With that, plus the blood loss from earlier..."

"I get it. Are you sure you want to stick around?" The bluette asked. "It's Wednesday, and it's broad daylight outside. You can go home if you'd like."

"Nah, it's all right," Ranma insisted. "I think that Usagi-chan kind of needs the moral support."

He then pointed to the corner of the training room, where the cyborg in question was all curled up, sulking. "She does seem to be taking this awfully hard," Asuka admitted, walking over to the blonde and taking a deep breath.

Then, without warning, the police captain grabbed Usagi by the back of her collar and tried to pull her up to her feet.

Tried, that is, because she had not been informed that the blonde was far, far heavier than she looked. While Asuka was very strong by normal human standards, she didn't have anything near the power required to casually yank the cyborg girl off the floor.

"Gah!" Usagi instead ended up falling backwards onto the floor, and barely missed hitting Asuka's leg with her flailing arms. _Thump!_

Asuka frowned for a moment, and then shrugged. "All right Tsukino, time to get up. If you're going to feel sorry for yourself, then do it on break."

Usagi winced and slowly sat up again, staring at the floor. "S-Sorry..." Normally Usagi was far more cheery and difficult to discourage, but causing such damage by accident had provoked old, lingering fears about her cybernetic body that Ranma's casual acceptance and kind words hadn't quite exorcised completely.

Asuka grit her teeth in annoyance, and then crossed her arms over her chest. "Don't sit there apologizing! Get up!"

Usagi eeped and jumped to her feet, her ponytails waving about in the air as she barely managed to stand up straight without tumbling back to the floor.

"Listen here, Tsukino," Asuka barked, glaring up at the taller woman. "If we're going to be working together, there are a few things you need to know about me." She jabbed a thumb into her chest. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but I'm a damn patient woman. I can tolerate mistakes. I can tolerate failure. I can even tolerate outright incompetence, to say nothing of severe moral shortcomings and dysfunctional personalities."

"It's true! If she didn't, she'd have snapped by now!" Ranma reasoned.

Then she gripped her hand into a fist. "What I WON'T tolerate is my people turning into useless balls of self-pity! If you screw up, get up and get over it!"

As Usagi blinked her eyes clear, Asuka poked her in the chest. "If you want to take responsibility for your mistakes, GREAT. If you want to improve yourself so that you won't make mistakes anymore, SPECTACULAR." Then she retracted her hand as her expression lost much of its heat. "Or, you could at least do what everyone else does and simply accept all the terrible things you do without worrying about it. Believe me, you never hear Snake lamenting all the things he's pointlessly destroyed, or hear Kyle wondering about improving his intellect."

"Are... Are they that bad?" Usagi asked, mystified. To her, the idea of someone launching a poorly-aimed barrage of missiles indoors was a complete catastrophe; she couldn't understand how anyone could brush off such an incident as a "mistake".

"Tsukino-kun, trust me," Asuka said seriously, patting the cyborg on the shoulder, "you have a long way to go before you can prove yourself to be as big a liability as our seasoned officers. Almost killing Saotome happens so often nowadays that I usually don't even bother with a verbal reprimand."

Ranma nodded sharply. "Besides, no matter what happens, the captain will take care of it in the end. There's a reason they put her in charge, you know."

Asuka twitched in annoyance, pursing her lips. "I know that you meant it as a compliment, but it still bothers me." Then she glanced sharply at Usagi again. "Anyway, are you ready for the next test or not?"

"Y-Yes!" Usagi said, her expression hardening. "I promise to do better this time!"

"Good. Follow us into the next room," the bluette said, opening the door into the hallway.

* * *

"This is our weight room," Asuka said simply, crossing her arms over her chest.

Usagi gulped as she looked at the massive device that dominated the relatively small area. Around a raised platform were numerous padded levers and arms that in shape and design resembled the devices found on ordinary weight machines found in gyms, but after that the similarities ended. Thick cables ran through giant engines brimming with pistons and gears while other pieces were supported by heavy hydraulic presses. Many of the components were bolted to the ceiling with thick chains held perfectly taught, and the entire machine hummed gently as it leeched power from a huge outlet mounted on the side of the room.

"Wh-What... is THAT?" the cyborg asked nervously.

"THAT is what our elite officers use to work out most of the time," Asuka explained bluntly. "Or at least, Saotome and Tekai do. Whenever I try it just feels like a complete waste." She shrugged. "Because normal weight machines are child's play to Saotome and useless to Tekai, we had this whopper installed. We'll be using it to test the limits of your strength."

Usagi simply continued staring, obviously intimidated.

"Don't worry so much about it," Ranma said reassuringly, patting the cyborg on the shoulder. "This test's gonna be a lot less intense than the last one, so don't worry about it. Step on up!"

Still looking quite timid, Usagi slowly crept up onto the raised platform of the device and then turned around to face Asuka and Ranma. "Okay..."

"Beginning test one," Asuka said as she walked over to a computer console on the bottom of the machine. "Hold on just a moment..."

_Vrrrrrmmm..._ The sound of engines working against massive weight filled the room, causing Usagi to flinch as she tried to determine exactly what was happening.

"You see the pad directly behind you?" Asuka asked.

Usagi turned around, and then timidly poked at what appeared to be a contact pad placed over the wall of solid metal that separated her from the noisy machinery working beyond. "This?"

"Yes. In this exercise we'll be analyzing your melee strength. Punch that area as hard as you can, repeatedly. Don't use any weapons, though."

"Oh. Okay. That sounds easy..." Usagi said uncertainly as she reared a fist back.

_THWUD! Kssss!_ Usagi flinched as the engine let out a blast of steam after absorbing the shock of her blow. Pulling her fist back, she could see a considerable indentation in the pad, but it seemed that the machine hadn't suffered any damage.

"That's great! Keep going!" Ranma said encouragingly, though he couldn't make heads or tails of the funny graphs that Asuka was poring over.

_THUD! WHUMP! POOMF!_ Usagi frowned as she continued assaulting the machine, feeling the massive device counter every strike with an equal burst of force. 'Don't I have more strength than this? I thought this body was tougher!'

Of course, the young cyborg had no idea how much strength she was using, only that the machine didn't seem to have any problem handling it. It wasn't as if she had a particularly great opinion of her power, but it just SEEMED like she should have been doing better.

_Beep!_ **Melee overdrive mode activated. Kinetic dampeners at maximum. Prepare for counter-shock.**

"Melee what?" Usagi asked, blinking as she reared back her fist again.

_Snap!_ Just below her wrist, her forearm split apart into what looked like half a dozen mini rocket engines clustered around an energy core.

_THWOOM!!_ Whatever awkward noise Usagi made as her fist lurched forward and then hit the weight machine with all the force and speed of a bullet train was drowned out by the sound of the reinforced superstructure buckling inward, followed by the sounds of the main engine tearing apart from the shockwave generated by the attack.

_Clank! Crunch! Pshoooof!_ Steam burst from the top of the device as the pistons broke down, and the entire machine started to shake from the continued vibrations.

"Uwah? What's happening?" Usagi asked, confused and a little frightened. Also, her right fist kind of hurt, and arcs of electricity were curling around her forearm, which she could only imagine was a bad thing.

Asuka twitched as the computer monitor started flashing erratically right before the entire screen cracked and went black. "The pressure! I don't think it can-"

_BWOOM!!_ Usagi was tossed away as the engine finally exploded, throwing a badly dented impact plate into her.

"AAAAAAUGH!" _Thwud!_ Whatever she could say about the events leading up to it, Usagi was pleasantly surprised to have something break her fall that seemed softer than the wall.

Asuka, who had ducked behind the console for safety, stood up and gaped at the remains of the weight machine.

Luckily - if one wanted to be optimistic about the turn of events - the machine was far too heavy and sturdy for the explosion to have blown the entire thing apart, so the detonation hadn't created too much debris or shrapnel.

Of course, no matter how fortunate that was, it didn't change the fact that a custom-built industrial grade device had just been gutted by accident.

"Tsukino! Are you okay?" Asuka shouted. She had intended to sound properly concerned for the girl's condition, but was already in the process of mentally estimating the damages, so the inquiry somehow ended up sounding quite threatening.

"Uh... yeah... I think..." Usagi mumbled, wobbling slightly as she tried to get her bearings.

A groaning noise from below her brought her attention to the object that had broken her fall.

"OH! Ranma-kun! Thank you for catching me!" The blonde said, flushing. "Are you all right, though?"

"Ugh... I forgot... you're much... heavier than you look..." The pigtailed man mumbled.

"HEY!! Don't be mean! That's not my fault!" Usagi shouted, a vein popping up on her head.

"Whatever. What the heck was that punch?" Ranma asked.

Usagi frowned and held up her hand, seemingly oblivious that she was still sitting on Ranma's chest. "I'm not sure..." then she smiled nervously at Asuka. "But I passed the test, right?"

_Pop!_ Everybody blinked in surprise as Usagi's right arm came off mid-bicep, followed by a brief shower of sparks and a plume of smoke spurting from the dismembered limb.

"That can't be good," Asuka said wearily as Usagi started trembling.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

* * *

"Okay, so you've got a mean right hook. VERY mean," Asuka mumbled, writing furiously in her notebook to try and get her mind off the damage that Usagi had done. Having the cyborg's arm fall off in the aftermath went a long way in dispelling her initial rage, and if she made a big deal out of it after her earlier speech she'd look like a hypocrite. "There's only one more test I'd like to run..."

She sweatdropped as she looked toward the other end of the women's locker room. "Well, whenever you're ready, I suppose."

_Pssssht! Psssssht!_ Ranma nervously held Usagi's arm up to the severed socket as the two spider-like repair droids rapidly worked around his hand.

_Sniffle!_ "Ahhh... is it g-going to be o-okay?" The blonde asked tearfully, looking away for fear of seeing her one of her own limbs in such condition.

"Eh, I'm sure these little buggers know what they're doin'," Ranma said off-handedly, sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

One of the drones promptly turned, and a spark of electricity came from one of its legs as it jabbed Ranma's finger.

_Bzrt!_ "Yow! Whaddya do that for?" Ranma yelled, barely holding his hand steady against his reflexes.

The drone started waving two of its limbs wildly at the pigtailed officer, and a few more sparks shot out of its welding torch.

"What's that? You wanna fight?" Ranma sneered at the tiny machine and raised his free hand, which started to glow an eerie blue.

Hearing Usagi whimper at the aggression surrounding one of her favorite limbs, Asuka sighed and turned toward the developing conflict. "Saotome, if you're going to pick fights with nearly defenseless metal bugs, at least wait until AFTER they're finished doing their job, would you?" Then her eyes narrowed. "And you two tin twits stop with the attitude and get back to work, or I'll personally ask Snake to melt you down into bullet casings."

Ranma and the drone provoking him both flinched back, and the automaton timidly lowered its body before retreating back to its partner.

"F-Fine," Ranma stuttered out as he turned away. "You're j-just lucky you're one of Usagi-chan's toys..."

"And what the hell is wrong with you, anyway?" Asuka asked Ranma suddenly. "Ever since we got here you've been stuttering like someone has a gun to your head. Is it that creepy for you to hold a robotic severed limb?"

Ranma flinched again, and swallowed deeply.

However creepy it was to hold a dismembered arm, even if it did flail about as if it were still attached to its owner, Ranma didn't think it was too big a deal after dealing with actual zombies so many times. Nor did the proximity of his hands next to super-heated welding torches faze him after being blown up by proper military-grade ordnance so many times.

"Uhm... yeah... it's just freakin' me out a little, that's all," he mumbled half-heartedly as he continued to glance back and forth nervously. 'Why the hell are we doing this in the girl's locker room? Don't we have a medical center, or a lab, or SOMETHING?' Just being in the area, even with the girls aware of his presence and fully clothed, sent a dark chill down his back as the memories of dozens of misunderstandings and mistakes as well as the beatings that resulted from them flashed through his head.

It certainly didn't help, either, that Usagi had perfect anti-pervert reflexes that incorporated some of the deadlier weapons on the experimental end of military technologies. Ranma had never been hit by a disruptor bolt, and he was very keen on keeping that streak alive.

"For goodness sake..." Asuka shook her head, and then glanced at Usagi. "The last test will be more utilitarian. Obviously you have considerable destructive power, and I imagine you'll be putting those functions to the test early and often."

Usagi blinked repeatedly, not being overly happy to hear that. "Well... okay... I can do that... but what about things like writing tickets and stuff? Cops have to do that too, right?"

"Well, actually-" Asuka began.

"We gave up doing those things a long time ago," Ranma said, shrugging. "After you've seen someone being eaten alive by hideous bioweapons, it just seems petty to bother a guy for driving too fast."

Asuka twitched as a vein popped up on her head. "Yes, thank you Saotome. Now shut up."

Ranma sweatdropped and was about to stutter an apology when he noticed that the drones were scrambling back into their holding bays. "Oh! It's done!"

"Uh? Already?" Usagi asked timidly, finally looking over as Ranma let go of her.

**Extremity reassembly complete. Adjusting muscular capacitors... complete. Recalibrating sensory regulators... complete. Right arm component functioning at 100 percent capacity.**

Usagi breathed out a sigh of relief, and then quickly turned and bowed to Ranma. "Thank you so much! I really appreciate you always helping me!"

Ranma jerked back in surprised, then chuckled nervously while tugging on his pigtail.

**As a side note, repair unit 00 says that the additional pressure from Saotome's careless assistance extended the repair time by 60 percent. It is submitting a recommendation that he be severely damaged in retribution.**

Usagi sweatdropped and turned away. 'There are parts of being this way that are convenient... and there are a lot that are very strange... I wonder if it's okay to have robots inside of me wanting to hurt my friends?'

"Well, whatever. If that's all over and done with, I'd like to move on with this," Asuka said bluntly, tapping her foot.

Usagi nodded, looking determined. "Right! I won't let you down! Just give me a minute..."

"Huh? A minute for what?"

The cyborg giggled as she rubbed her head. "Well, I'm pretty dirty from the explosion, and my shirt ripped at the shoulders earlier. Don't worry, I'll be quick," she said reassuringly before peeling her scorched uniform shirt up off of her body.

Sighing as she looked at the damaged article, she tossed it haphazardly over her shoulder before glancing at the lockers that lined the wall.

"Now... wait, which one was mine, again?" She frowned and turned back to Asuka, who was gaping at the sight of Usagi's neon pink brassiere. "We have a lot of lockers here for so few people, I can't... uh... Takami-san, what's wrong?"

"Uh... er..." Asuka mumbled, wondering what was going on. Were Usagi and Ranma so close after such a short period of time? She had freely stripped her shirt off right in front of the martial artist, who himself hadn't made a move...

Actually, as the police captain glanced at him, it appeared that he had frozen stiff; Usagi's shirt had landed right on his head and he hadn't moved a muscle to get it off.

Usagi saw the bluette's eyes shift to look at something behind her, and she turned to look in confusion.

The blonde blinked as Ranma stared back at her like a deer in the headlights, her torn and battered shirt draped over one eye.

"No, this is definitely not good," Asuka mumbled, rubbing her forehead. 'I guess it's more that she's distracted than that she's used to him...'

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!"

"Wait! No! I'm not-stop!"

_Blam! Blam! BWEEEEM!_

* * *

Asuka glared harshly at the young woman standing before her in a spare DAPC uniform and flushing badly.

"Tsukino... you..."

"Uh, I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" Usagi shouted reflexively, bowing her head. "It was all my fault! I'll do better!"

"First of all, STOP apologizing to me. If you're going to be blubbering like that, at least do it to Saotome."

The cyborg girl immediately did as recommended, whirling around and bowing as quickly as she could to the man sitting next to them and sporting bandage wrappings on his head and arm. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! It was my fault!"

Ranma sweatdropped as he smiled and waved her off. "Aw, I know. Don't worry about it. This sort of thing happens all the time." 'Damn the girls' locker room! Someday I'll destroy that wretched chamber of pain once and for all!'

"Indeed, it does happen all the time," Asuka agreed, looking far less comfortable with the idea. "But that aside, Tsukino, in every combat test you've proven that you have enormous destructive potential complicated by equally enormous incompetence."

Usagi flinched, and her eyes started getting wet and dewey, which in turn caused Ranma to start panicking.

"So at the very least," Asuka continued obliviously, "you're a huge step up from our last blonde, who just had incompetence... or at least, you will be so long as you can keep from destroying our officers and property in the future."

Usagi blinked several times, and Ranma sighed in relief as he saw the cyborg's emotions settle.

"Though, as long as we're on the topic," Asuka began again, glancing at her clipboard. "In an hour you've managed to lightly damage three rooms, destroy a piece of equipment worth a billion yen and half a row of lockers, and inflict painful yet entirely temporary injuries upon Saotome three consecutive times. All during the simple and theoretically harmless process of taking a few stupid tests."

Ranma winced as Usagi flinched with each point, as if an arrow were striking her in the back each time.

Asuka sighed. "Congratulations: you're DAPC material, through and through."

"I'm what?" Usagi asked, a sweatdrop rolling down her head.

"It's not that I'm opposed, but I'm kind of worried about the kind of standards we have in place here," Ranma deadpanned.

"Don't tell **me** that," Asuka snapped back. "All in all Tsukino, you're plenty fit, and I can give you considerable leeway in assuming that the reason you keep messing up is because you're still not used to your new body. Welcome to the team."

Asuka had to squint against the shining, tearful smile on the young cyborg's face as waves of relief washed over her.

"It's really okay? I... I can be a police officer?"

"Sure, why not?" Asuka shrugged. "I really can't imagine any other place that could make use of a perfectly innocent-looking, clumsy, heavily armed college drop-out. Besides, it sure simplifies us having to keep an eye on you."

Usagi immediately launched herself forward and enveloped her superior in a surprise hug. "Oh, thank you! I won't let you down, Asuka-chan!"

Asuka twitched. "That's 'Captain,' Tsukino."

Before she had gotten to the second word of her sentence, however, Usagi had rounded on Ranma, giving him an equally vigorous hug.

"And you too, Ranma-kun! I promise I'll make all this up to you!"

"It's really okay," the martial artist protested weakly. "I'd really prefer that you just not shoot me anymore."

"I... I can't promise that, but I'll try hard!" Usagi said, nodding firmly.

'Can't promise? What's with that?' Ranma thought, his eye twitching.

"But... wait. Didn't you say there was another test?" Usagi asked, turning back toward Asuka.

"That's right. There is," the police captain confirmed, her eyes narrowing. "Naturally, combat duty is the most important and demanding work that you'll be doing as a member of this department. However, there will be plenty of times that more mundane tasks are demanded of you. I'd like to see how you use your abilities to deal with these obstacles."

"Oh. Okay, then!" Usagi said, smiling. She didn't really know what Asuka was talking about, but she was just glad that the next and final test wouldn't have anything to do with violence.

* * *

"Uh... why are we back in the target practice room?" Usagi asked, scratching her head. "I thought we were done with combat tests."

"We are," Asuka said bluntly. _Clunk!_ Then she dropped a bucket full of soapy water down next to the cyborg. "This isn't about causing damage. It's about fixing the damage you've caused."

Usagi blinked, her face paling slightly. "Uwah?"

"Despite its budget surplus, the DAPC doesn't hire janitorial staff due to the numerous security risks involved. So I assign officers to cleaning shifts in order to keep the place tidy and repair the considerable damage that you people keep causing," she explained. Then she smirked. "That seems fair, doesn't it?"

"Er..." Usagi slowly looked around at the room and the numerous scorch marks all over the floor and walls. "I... I guess so... this isn't that bad..."

"No, not at all," Asuka agreed. "All you have to do here is throw away the shrapnel and scrub away the soot." Then her eye gleamed. "Of course, cleaning the weight room will be more of a challenge, as you'll have to take apart and dispose of the weight machine you destroyed."

"Grk!" Usagi flinched as her face darkened.

"But the real problem is the locker room. You ripped up the lockers pretty bad, but they can be repaired, at least."

Asuka stepped closer, and despite being taller than her superior, Usagi suddenly felt as if the police captain were staring down at her from high above, her eyes glimmering with subtle rage.

"I'm VERY interested to see how you clean up that mess. You have a welding torch or something, don't you?"

Usagi gulped. "I-I don't kn-know..."

"Ah, well, if you don't, we can work something out." Asuka crossed her arms over her chest. "Don't forget, I'll be watching the whole time, so make sure you do a good job, okay?"

"Okay..." Then Usagi brightened suddenly and turned toward Ranma. "Oh! Ranma-kun! Could you-"

"Ow! Ow!" Ranma held his injured arm tenderly as he headed toward the exit, being careful not to make eye contact with anyone. "Jeez, these injuries are starting to give me trouble. I'm gonna go lie down, okay?"

"Of course. You go relax," Asuka said dismissively, still keeping her eyes on Usagi.

The cyborg girl looked downcast as she stared at the cleaning bucket. 'Nobody told me about cleaning duty! This sucks!'

* * *

"Ah, man. This is the worst..."

People walking by the open market stared in awe and apprehension at the two Core infantrymen that were standing at attention on the sidewalk.

The new mk. II storm suits had replaced the aging protect-gear apparatus in light of the numerous unconventional weapons that Core soldiers had often faced in the field. While the older armor was still very effective against ordinary small arms, against opponents who could get close enough to fight in melee and attack the holes in the slow-moving soldiers' defenses, the armor barely provided enough protection to make up for the mobility that the soldiers lost.

The storm suits were an attempt to fix the problem by further ignoring mobility and simply making the soldier as much of a tank as was economically feasible; instead of armor pads in key areas secured around Kevlar suits, the men were instead sealed completely in a shell of reinforced metal and machinery. Nearly every bodily motion was assisted by all manner of servos and devices, and the entire suit could be locked up tight enough to pressurize itself and stay air-tight in case of gas attacks or other airborne hazards.

While a very impressive sight, the grandeur of such gear was surely wasted on the exercise of standing next to the finance minister as he browsed a jewelry stand. In the suits, even without the helmets, the two men stood at well over six feet and were a veritable barricade to anyone trying to move about freely (partially because of their bulk, and partially because nobody wanted to get too close to what looked like a pair of robots with human heads). At the same time, the men couldn't find an out-of-the-way spot to bide their time, as that would mean leaving their charge wide open to potential attack.

"Hey, what's the moneygrubber looking at, anyway?" asked the first man, whose armor was a solid gray decorated with red stripes.

The other soldier decked out in blue-shaded camouflage armor shrugged, which caused the bulky shoulderpads to nearly bowl over someone who had worked up the nerve to pass by. "I think it's for his girlfriend, isn't it?"

"Girlfriend? What about his wife?" The first soldier groused.

"Not a problem anymore. Not since she found out about the girlfriend," the man in blue chuckled. "Lifestyles of the rich and the famous, eh?"

"Yeesh! I haven't had a date in a month, and that rusty old geezer is drowning in women!" His lip curled slightly in a grin. "Then again, if the wife's out of the house, maybe I'll track her down. She was quite the fox..."

"Pfeh. It's better not to get involved at all," the soldier in blue muttered. "You know what they say about business and pleasure..."

The man in stripes snorted. "Business has been slow. Why is it that we have to spend our time babysitting this geezer when there's real work to do out there?"

"You got me," his companion mumbled. "Abductions, missing people everywhere, police murders, strange terrorist attacks... it seems like everyone in the entire city is panicking EXCEPT Core."

The first soldier blinked in surprise. "Eh? A strange terrorist attack? When?"

"You didn't hear? They burnt a night club to the ground and demolished the building next to it. It was really weird. They didn't kill everyone, and let go all the people they captured alive. All those witnesses were spouting stories about the cyborgs hunting monsters and them just being in the crossfire."

"What? Terrorists, fighting monsters?" The striped soldier scoffed.

"That's the rumor. Apparently the brass is quite embarrassed that criminals are making more headway than we are into dealing with whatever threat they're dealing with... although obviously we can't run around assaulting monster hangouts easily if there are civs around."

"Geez, what a drag..."

The striped soldier sighed and started toying with the helmet in his hand when he noticed a young boy running across the street, looking like he was in a panic.

"Eh? Hey! Hey, you! That's dangerous!" He yelled, glancing at the numerous cars quickly grinding to a halt as the boy dashed over the street. Luckily, traffic wasn't too bad at this hour, and these streets had a low speed limit because of all the pedestrian traffic as well, so none of the cars had any problem stopping in time.

The soldier was fairly surprised when the boy turned toward him and his partner; it was unusual to see someone dash toward them right after being scolded by the police.

"P-Please! Please help!" The boy shouted, reaching the sidewalk and then rushing up to the soldiers.

"What's wrong?" The man in blue asked quickly, his hand rising toward the rifle slung behind his back.

"Over there!" The boy turned and pointed toward an alley across the street where he had come from. "There's a girl there! She's injured! Please, help her!"

"All right, show us to 'er," the first man said firmly, dropping his helmet to the side.

The men didn't make it two steps before they attracted the attention of the man they were in the midst of protecting.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going? You can't leave me here!" The finance minister growled, promptly turning away from his impending purchase.

The man in blue promptly turned and saluted even as his companion followed the child without hesitation. "I'm sorry sir, but an emergency medical situation takes priority in this case!"

"What? Takes priority? Who do you think I am?"

"If it worries you, I would recommend following us or taking cover while the situation is contained, sir!" Without listening to the politician's blustered response, he turned sharply and raced into the street, his heavy metal boots thumping noisily against the asphalt.

"She's here! In here!" The boy nervously pointed into the alley as the two heavily armored men slowed their pace.

"Hello? Do you need an ambulance? Can you speak?" The man in stripes asked, slowly approaching the figure huddled at the end of the alley.

Trembling in the corner next to some garbage cans was a figure wrapped up in some sort of dirty, bloodstained blanket. Although it was facing away from the mouth of the alley, the soldiers could only assume that it was the girl that the child spoke of.

"That's her, right?" The man in blue asked the boy. "Do you know what her injuries are?"

The boy shook his head nervously. "I d-don't know... but there's blood all over her face... and when I tried to help her up she yelled at me."

"You should be careful in handling an injured person," the first soldier chided as he stepped closer to the girl. "If you move them, you can hurt them worse."

Then he stepped within arm's reach of the figure, who was squirming under her blanket silently. "Hey, lady, what's wrong? Can we help? Can you hear me?"

Slowly, as if afraid, the girl turned toward the soldier towering over her, still trembling.

The man frowned as he looked at her face, which did indeed have blood around the cheeks and chin, though most of it had apparently been wiped off. She looked like she was in her teens, and was clearly in bad shape; in addition to being huddled in an alley trembling weakly, her face was deathly pale, and was sweating feverishly.

"All right, just calm down. We'll call you an ambulance right away, all right?"

Given the girl's total silence up until that point, he was quite surprised when she suddenly grabbed onto his steel-encased arm in a panic.

"N-No!" She said nervously. "Please... just..." Hesitating, she shifted to the side, moving just enough to see between the striped soldier's legs.

The man blinked as the injured girl gasped.

"No... no... not here..."

* * *

Across the street, the finance minister fidgeted nervously as the owner of the jewelry stand rummaged through his back stock for the piece he had selected.

Not that the aging politician had any enemies that would dare or even want to hurt him physically - save perhaps for a few very upset women - but like many individuals in the upper echelons of the government, he assumed that the city's notorious terrorist menace was behind the mysterious and terrifying disappearances that were sweeping the city. Rumors of terrorist weapons fighting monsters notwithstanding, such mysterious and awful threats had only been engineered in the past by the Freedom's Angels, and the favorite target of murderous "freedom fighters" was always successful politicians.

Being in the grip of paranoia, it was only natural that he'd notice immediately when a large Russian man stepped past the stand he was browsing and then stopped next to him.

The minister froze, feeling his hackles rise as he slowly craned his head up to look at the man's face.

It didn't relieve his worry much that the foreigner appeared to be ignoring him completely while staring thoughtfully across the street into the alley where his bodyguards had run off to.

Nodding sharply, the Russian dropped a large, heavy bundle on the ground next to the minister before opening the breast pocket of his trench coat and digging for something.

The foreigner seemed quite nonplussed when he pulled out an empty cigarette carton, and the politician gulped when the stranger finally turned toward him.

"Pardon my rudeness, but may I trouble you for a cigarette?" The Russian said in flawless Japanese, tinted though it was by his accent.

"Ah... ah..." the finance minister trembled for a moment, glancing back at the alley where his soldiers were. "T-Take whatever you want! Just, please, don't hurt me!"

The Russian gave him a perplexed stare at the comment, frowning. "I have no intention of harming you. But if you're willing to spare a cigarette..." he suddenly found the aforementioned item being thrust in his face by the minister.

"Here! Here! Think nothing of it!"

Still regarding the politician strangely, the Russian plucked the item from his shaking fingers. "You have my utmost thanks, sir." Then he turned and brought the cigarette to his lips, once again completely disregarding the minister.

* * *

"You've got to help me!" The girl suddenly shouted, grabbing onto the soldier's arm like a life preserver. "He's going to kill me! Stop him, please!"

"What? Who's going to kill you?" The man in stripes asked seriously as his partner quickly drew his rifle, eyeing the entrance to the alleyway.

The first soldier waited patiently for a response, but the girl seemed to have frozen stiff while staring at him. "Miss? Are you okay? Miss? Look, if you're not too injured to move, we can take you someplace safe!"

The girl's response, oddly enough, was to lick her lips and start panting.

'He's so close... I can... I can smell it. Smell his blood...'

"Hey... kid, just what's wrong with you? Stop zoning out, all right?"

She promptly winced and pulled back. 'No... I can't. Not here. Not now. Hold it together! Just until night falls...' "That man! The foreigner in the trench coat! He's going to kill me!"

"Who... that guy?" The soldier in blue mumbled, pointing across the street toward the admittedly conspicuous figure towering above the crowd of shoppers.

"Yes! Please, kill him first!"

Both soldiers were startled at the request, and gave the young woman an uneasy glance before they turned toward the street.

* * *

"Hey, Rayden-san! Whatcha doing out here, screwball?"

Rayden blinked in surprise at hearing a familiar voice come from behind him, and his hesitation cost him as the cigarette he had just acquired was yanked out of his fingers.

"Gotta quit the sticks, man! You already get massive injections of lead on a regular basis, right? No need for this!"

Rayden twitched as Snake grinned at him from where he was hanging on the Russian's shoulder.

"It would be a shock and a blessing if my end were to be something so mundane as cancer," Rayden deadpanned, reaching for the cigarette in Snake's hands.

"Aw, c'mon! Don't be like that!" Kyle said, appearing on the other side of the gunman. "You should look forward to the future!"

"He's got it right, pal," Snake insisted as he flicked the cigarette away into a nearby trash can. "Besides, if you're going to live life as if death could come at any moment, you could at least try to have some fun with it."

"Is there a reason for your presence here?" The gunman asked wearily.

Tiro waved to a pretty girl the next booth over as he stepped up next to Snake. "Nah, we're just hanging out. You missed pizza."

"Regretful," the super-soldier said in a voice that indicated he didn't regret it one bit. "If that will be all..."

"H-Hey!" The finance minister, who had been dividing his attention between the newcomers and the stand owner counting his change, suddenly spoke up now that his purchase was complete. "Are you all police officers?"

Rayden was about to reply in the negative, when Snake continued his meddlesome streak by pushing past him and answering. "Yup! We're more or less on break right now, though. Why? Something wrong?"

The politician breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh. Then I suppose you must be an undercover officer, or something of that nature," he said, pointing to Rayden.

"... Yes. Something... of that nature," the gunman mumbled, his eyes carefully tracking something across the street.

"Excellent, excellent!" The minister said nervously, tucking his purchase under his arm. "You see, I was assigned a pair of bodyguards, but it seems they were distracted and left. If I could trouble you to accompany me until they return..."

"Okay, sure," Snake said casually, which surprised Tiro considerably. "What's your name?"

"I'm finance minister Tana Hikoshi. Now I was going to-"

"That's great, Hikoshi-san," Snake said immediately, saluting as he cut the elderly man off. "I'll ensure that nothing entirely fatal happens to you, probably." Then he turned toward Rayden. "Seriously though, what're you doing here? It's unusual to see you marching about out in the open without a target."

* * *

"Who are those people he's talking to? They look like police officers," the soldier in the striped armor said as he and his companion stepped out of the alley.

The vampiress smiled slightly when she heard this, feeling much of her nervousness wash away; whoever the Catholic gunman was, there was no way his actions were legal. If she could get him surrounded by the authorities, he'd either have to flee and abandon his hunt, or attack the police. If the latter occurred, it would be a simple matter to hide herself while the authorities swarmed the fool, and however the fight ended, she'd be safe and the vampires would have less enemies. Things finally looked to be going her way.

"Hey, I recognize that guy! He's DAPC!" The man in blue exclaimed.

Whatever reaction the Core soldiers experienced personally upon hearing that acronym was promptly eclipsed by confusion as the presumably injured girl suddenly scrambled past them and darted down the street as if she was being chased by hungry wolves.

"Wh-What? Hey, where are you going?"

"You shouldn't be... running? I... I guess she's not that badly injured..."

* * *

Rayden sighed, realizing that there was no way for him to leave without the DAPC officers following him. Not that their help was entirely unwanted, but the super-soldier found dealing with them at least as exhausting as anyone else did.

"I am not without a target. And she is making her escape even as we speak."

Hikoshi frowned. "That's unfortunate, but I would really appreciate it if you could accompany me-"

"Right away, sir!" Snake shouted suddenly, grabbing onto the man's arm. "You'll be safe with us! Come on!" Then he patted Rayden on the shoulder. "Lead the way, Jesus-lover!"

"Very well, but it's up to you to keep up," Rayden said gruffly as he started walking briskly down the street in the same direction as his prey. "She is not difficult to track, but when the sun falls, we will need to keep close."

"W-Wait! Where do you think you're going?" Hikoshi shouted as he was dragged along behind Snake. "You're supposed to be protecting me!"

"Yes sir!" Kyle said sharply as he followed behind Snake and the helpless politician. "We'll protect you with our lives!"

"Protect me with your lives in THAT direction!" The minister growled, trying to free his arm from Snake's grip. "We're not going this way!"

"Unfortunately, the elimination of dangerous enemy targets that pose an immediate threat to the general populace takes priority over things like protecting random politicians we find on the street," Snake explained bluntly. "If we were amateur soldiers like your previous bodyguards, we'd just ditch you." Then the American winked back at the increasingly frightened man. "Luckily, you happened to run into Tokyo's elite, here! We'll accomplish both tasks at once!"

"Well, you go ahead and do that," Tiro said suddenly, tugging on his collar as he stopped following, "but I think I'll sit this one out. It's my day off, and I've got a bad feeling..."

"Y-Yes! That's fine!" Hikoshi said desperately, snatching his arm free and dashing back toward Tiro. "I'll go with you, then!"

Before the politician got more than a few feet, Kyle grabbed the back of his shirt and then lifted the man up off his feet.

"H-Hey! What are you doing, fool!"

Kyle smiled brightly as he placed the finance minister over his shoulder and held him there firmly. "It would be bad if you went with Tiro; he's too weak to protect you!"

"Yup! You take good care of him, eh?" The lecher said, turning away so that no one could see his grin.

"No! Stop! Stop right now! Please! I'll leave on my own! I don't need a bodyguard!"

"That would be irresponsible!" Kyle said, ignoring the sudden surge of energy in his brain trying to inform him of the tremendous irony of that statement. "Besides, you're making a big fuss out of nothing. Rayden-san usually hunts down ordinary criminals, not the mutants and robots and stuff that **we** usually fight."

"M-Mutants? Robots?!"

"Yeah, really. If anything, it'll probably be a pretty boring fight," Snake agreed, nodding sharply.

Rayden sweatdropped as he saw their quarry trip on a crack in the pavement and then shove away a man that tried to help her up. "Well, actually..."

* * *

"Augh! This is so boring!" Usagi whined as she laid belly-up on one of the wooden benches lined up in the middle of the women's locker room, her hands clasped behind her head.

Asuka, who was seated nearby, sweatdropped as she regarded Usagi, and then she glanced over at the small spider drones that were busily welding together the shredded lockers.

"You know, most people in your position would be happy that they had it so easy," the bluette remarked. "The cleaning in the target room took maybe five minutes with those extra arms in your shoulders, you were able to atomize the wreckage in the weight room instead of having to carry it out - I'm going to have Seras check the physics on that as soon as he sobers up a bit, by the way - and now you get to take your time and relax while your robot minions do all the repair work for you."

Usagi had the decency to blush slightly as her superior's point sunk in. "Well... okay, fine, you're right. Still, if today is supposed to be the day off, you could at least let me take care of this stuff tomorrow."

"Tomorrow we're going to have real work to do. We DO have that whole vampire thing to take care of, you know?"

The blonde nodded despondently, then let her arms fall to her side lazily as the sizzling noises from the drones' torches filled the room.

"Hey, Asuka-chan..."

Asuka's eyes narrowed at Usagi's form of address, but she let it go. "What?"

"It's... It's about Ranma-kun..."

"What about him?" The police captain asked, preparing herself for an array of possible questions. The first ones that came to mind, considering who she was dealing with, were those that pertained to Ranma's relationship status, tastes, and other things that could be used to conquer the martial artist's heart, although she wouldn't have been entirely surprised to hear Usagi ask something regarding how Ranma was able to survive a small chunk of a missile barrage so easily.

"Well... why is he so..." Usagi frowned as she searched for the right word. "... Forgiving? I think that's right."

"Forgiving? How do you mean?" Asuka asked, scooting closer to the cyborg.

"I... I **shot** him. Repeatedly. But it's like he hardly even cares," the blonde mumbled, clearly perplexed.

Asuka snorted. "I assure you, he DOES care, but in the long run he knows that you're not doing it out of malice."

"Why does that matter?" Usagi asked, pushing herself up. "I could have killed him! But he just brushes it off like it's nothing! That's just not normal!"

"Hmmm..." Asuka scratched her chin, surprised that Usagi's inquiry was so thoughtful. 'Heh. She's a good kid after all.' "Well, when it comes to danger, Saotome's always been one to put others first," she explained. "I personally think it's a very bad habit, but he's the type that wouldn't hesitate to take a bullet for someone else if he could. I'm sure that if any of the missiles that you launched were headed for me, for example, he wouldn't have gotten off so lightly or forgiven you so easily."

Then her expression darkened slightly. "Besides that... Saotome has... an unfortunate past. It's not something overly dramatic, as I understand it, but apparently he didn't grow up with very good people."

"Huh? Was he abused or something?" Usagi asked.

"I assume so. As I understand it, he severed his ties to his past, and his family, when he joined the police force. There has to be a good reason for that; for you to forsake everyone in your life so completely... well, there must not have been too many good feelings tying him down." Even Asuka, daughter to despised criminals, still felt affection and some respect for her family. The fact that she kept such scarce contact with them was due to mutually agreed-upon necessity, and she couldn't really imagine leaving them for good.

She looked up at Usagi, her face hard and serious. "All told, I imagine that whenever someone treats Saotome kindly, or with respect, he elevates those people above him, in a way. They become sacred to him, to be protected at his own expense." Then she frowned. "It would seem that they also gain some inherent right to hurt him at their leisure. He'll usually complain about it, and in some cases he'll even exact retribution. But beyond that, his policy seems to be 'forgive and forget'. He simply doesn't take it seriously."

_Sniffle!_

Asuka winced as Usagi's eyes started flooding with emotion. "Eh... then again, it might be that fifteen years of intense martial arts experience and hardship has pounded all the sense out of him when it comes to danger. Pain and injury are such a common part of his life, it's no wonder he sees it in a different light than we do."

Usagi sniffled again, and scrubbed one of her eyes with her hand. "I feel so awful... he's always trying to help me, but I always end up causing so much trouble for him..."

"Well, that's how it is, isn't it?" Asuka said, smirking as she wagged a finger at her. "To him it's more important that you mean well than it is that you keep your gun barrels closed."

"Mmmm... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not..." Usagi said, clearly worried.

"Well, as long as we're exploring this topic, why did you react so violently to him seeing you in your underwear? I'd think most girls would settle for throwing a washbin, or a shoe or something."

"I..." Usagi frowned deeply. "I have no idea. I never used to do things like that. But..." She held up one of her hands, and didn't even flinch as her fingers suddenly elongated and split apart at the joints, the pieces connected to each other by wires and metal bands. "It's like... a reflex, I think. I get embarrassed, and my first thought is to cover myself. But for some reason, instead of covering myself, I shoot at people. It's automatic."

Asuka sweatdropped. "So... you have an anti-pervert combat routine? Huh. No wonder Tiro hasn't touched you yet."

"I have a what?"

"It sounds like there's a program installed that activates a series of commands automatically under certain conditions. In this case, if a man sees you naked when you're not expecting it, you unleash hell without even realizing it." Asuka nodded thoughtfully. "Of course... that begs the question of why you have such a program to defend yourself from lechers when your ordinary combat skills are barely sufficient to defend yourself from actual enemies."

* * *

Yamiko blinked in surprise, and then slowly raised one eyebrow. "Professor Konta?"

"Yes?" Yoshi asked, lowering his head and arm once again so that he could go back to working on the shell of the mini-chronosphere.

The Russian scientist hesitated in asking her next question because she knew without a doubt the answer would be ridiculous, but her curiosity overwhelmed her. "Did you just flip off the ceiling?"

"Not quite," Yoshi explained, "I got the sudden feeling that someone was criticizing my work, is all. Now run the stream capacitors again; I believe I've eliminated the additional resistance."

Yamiko sighed and moved to comply. "Yes, Professor."

* * *

_Knock! Knock!_ "Hello? Is anyone in here?"

Usagi hopped to her feet as she recognized the voice immediately, banishing thoughts of her injured landlord from her mind. "Ami-chan! Is that you?"

The doors to the locker room crept open, and Ami timidly poked her head in. "Usagi-chan? Are you here?"

Usagi waved brightly as her friend entered the room, which left Asuka wondering at the cyborg's ability to shift emotional states so quickly. "Hello! Did you come to see me on my first day at work?"

"Yes, we just thought we'd check up on you after our classes were over..." Ami said, glancing about.

Though she spent a few seconds staring at the two repair drones fixing the lockers, she eventually turned toward Asuka. "This place is really... quiet right now, huh? Is everyone out on patrol?"

"That depends on how loosely you define 'patrol'," Asuka mumbled, "but essentially, no. Everyone's just slacking off, is all."

"Did you come here by yourself?" Usagi asked.

Ami shook her head. "No, Mako-chan and Mina-chan came too. Rei had something important to do, though."

"Oh... so where are they?" Usagi asked.

"GAAAAAAAAH!! NO!! STOP IT!! GET AWAY!!"

"WHAT IS THAT THING, ANYWAY?!"

"SEEYAAUGH!"

As Usagi and Ami flinched back from the screams, Asuka slapped herself in the forehead and pushed past them, grumbling the whole time. "Typical, everyone else gets to take it easy, and I'm stuck here trying to keep our damn pet alien from killing our guests..."

Usagi and Ami shared a nervous glance before they followed the police captain out the door, and then sweatdropped as they found Makoto and Minako trying to both hide behind Ranma, who had his foot planted on the snarling alien's beak.

"I said cut it out, Hunter! Swipe at me again and I'm putting you on a diet!" Ranma threatened, his legs already sporting several curved, bleeding gashes.

"SHRAUGH!" Hunter screamed back in protest, its spine-mounted claws twitching back, as if deciding whether or not it was worth it to continue struggling.

In what the other girls could only consider an act of paramount stupidity, Asuka stalked up to the troubled alien and then gave it a swift kick in its side, causing the creature to scurry backwards away from Ranma and the others. It's doubtful that Hunter considered the attack anything more than a minor irritant, but still turned his blood-red gaze upon Asuka as he snapped his beak viciously.

"SREEEE-"

"Don't give me that!" Asuka shouted, cutting the zergling off. "I swear, if you don't have someone paying attention to you EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, you start flying off the handle and trying to eat our guests! You're worse than a cat!"

"Whoa, hey, there's no need for that kind of talk. Let's not lose our cool, here," Ranma said nervously, looking around to see if she had somehow summoned his feared enemy.

Hunter made a deep rumbling noise in the back of his throat, but finally lowered himself into a less aggressive pose and settled for glaring hatefully at the unfamiliar people.

"Wh-Why do you let that thing run around here without a leash or something?" Makoto gasped, too scared to even take the opportunity to jump into Ranma's arms and feel him up.

"That would involve both finding a leash strong enough to hold him and someone stupid enough to try and leash him," Asuka said. "So if you'd like to volunteer..."

"Well, then why don't you put it to bed?" Minako suggested, poking her head over Ranma's shoulder.

"The expression is 'put it to sleep,' but yeah, that's a good idea," Makoto said sourly.

Asuka snorted. "I'll have you know that Hunter is a valuable combat asset and a beloved, if not relentlessly violent, member of our team," the police captain insisted, planting her hands on her hips. "Besides, Snake causes FAR more damage than Hunter does. If I have to kill the zergling, then I'd have to put him down too. And I'd certainly have to put Kyle to sleep, or at least have him securely caged. And before you know it, my entire department is reduced to me, the drunk, and the lecherous idiot."

"S-So! Did you guys want to take a tour of the facility?" Usagi asked, wanting to distract her friends both from the deadly alien warbeast and the reputation of her new co-workers.

"No thanks. We got a pretty good view of the place when we spent the other night sweeping it clean," Makoto deadpanned.

"Uh... we did come to check up on Usagi-chan, but also..." Ami trailed off for a moment, glancing nervously at the brooding zergling. "You have a vampire prisoner here, don't you?"

"Yes. Why?" Asuka asked, not deigning to guess at her cousin's motives.

"Why else? We want to find out where the rest of those bloodsuckers are stashed away and blast 'em!" Makoto said enthusiastically, pounding a fist into her palm.

Asuka pressed her lips into a thin line as she considered the request. On the one hand, she figured these girls were already way in over their heads planning to assault the Freedom's Angels primary stronghold; she would hate to run into a bunch of short-skirted ghouls on the next DAPC raid, and not just because the conjured image was disgusting to think about.

On the other hand, for all their immature bluster, the Senshi were powerful and seasoned demon hunters, and Usagi herself was an arsenal which was more than a match for any undead she'd ever heard of.

"He's been very tight-lipped so far," Asuka warned, not being herself aware that Snake had broken the midian after a round of target practice and a swift kick. "How do you figure you're going to get anything out of him?"

"Just let us talk to him for now. If we really can't get anything out of him, we have other options," Ami explained.

Asuka shrugged her shoulders and then gestured past her. "All right, then. Follow me."

The other girls all flinched, and none of them took another step.

Sighing, Asuka rolled her eyes. "Right, right... Hunter, beat it, would you?"

The zergling turned his head toward the police captain curiously, his tail swaying lazily.

"Well? Go on! Get!" The police captain shouted, her eyes narrowing.

Making a rumbling noise deep in the back of his throat, Hunter moved to the center of the hallway, and then raised its spine-mounted arms high into the air, much to the confusion of those present.

Well, except for Ranma, who lived with the creature. "Wait! Hunter, no, don't-"

_SKRAK! CRACK! THUMP!_ Everyone jumped back as the killer alien tore straight into the floor, ripping easily through the tiled surface and only taking slightly longer to utterly destroy the concrete and rebar below.

After a few seconds, Hunter was gone, and a circular portion of the floor had been reduced to shredded rubble.

"Well... Tsukino, after your bots are done with the lockers, see what you can do with that, would you?" Asuka requested, deciding to take the incident in stride and ignore it. Nowadays she didn't have the luxury of getting worked up over little things like aliens digging holes in her building, after all.

"What? But that wasn't my fault!" Usagi protested.

"I know. That's why it was phrased as a question, even though you know it's an order," the bluette explained. "So, if everyone else would follow me..."

"Awwwww!"

* * *

"Dang, this place could use some carpet," Makoto mumbled as she followed Ranma into the sub-levels of the DAPC headquarters, having attached herself to his arm at the first opportunity.

"Eh, I think dressing this area up would kind of ruin the atmosphere," Ranma protested, shrugging.

"Right," Asuka agreed from the front, "these environs are meant to say: 'You don't want to end up here, so shut up and be a good little freak of nature.' Had you girls caused us any trouble back when we first met, you would already be familiar with this area."

"How many life-forms do you have prisoner down here?" Ami asked, following Asuka closely and looking about with all the powerful curiosity of a scientific mind.

"Thirteen different organisms that we know about," the police captain responded as they made their way to the holding vault at the end of sub-level entrance room. Nobody present seemed surprised or concerned that Seras was sleeping soundly at the foot of the vault.

Ami promptly turned to stare at her cousin nervously. "That you know about? There are things in here you don't know of?"

"Well, obviously I can't answer that question definitively since I don't know about them, can I?" Asuka deadpanned. Reaching the vault, she stepped to the keypad on the side and input an eight-digit number, making sure that her body was between the keys and any prying eyes in the room.

"Wow... th-that's kinda creepy..." Minako mumbled as she started looking around the environment more carefully. "Eh? What's that?"

"Wh-What? Knock it off Mina!" Makoto said immediately, squeezing Ranma's bicep even more tightly.

Minako frowned over at a pile of rusting metal crates, and then shook her head. "Well... no, nevermind. Sorry." The blonde girl took a few steps closer to Asuka, though she forced herself to relax slightly. 'I'm just getting scared and jumping at shadows, that's all...'

_VrrrrrrRRRRRRRHM!_

Asuka turned around as the massive gears of the vault door began to turn, and planted her hands on her hips. "Calm down, ladies. There's nothing to be afraid of down here that isn't sealed behind thick layers of heavy metals and the occasional pattern of Shinto wards."

"She's right. Besides Hunter, we can practically guarantee that there are no aliens running around the base trying to eat you," Ranma said casually before turning pointedly to the brunette hanging off his arm. "So, really, it's safe to let go of me."

"I'll be the judge of that," Makoto challenged, a victorious grin on her face.

A loud creaking noise filled the room as the vault finished opening, revealing another wall of metal with a large gated doorway in the middle.

Minako raised an eyebrow as she stared at the dirty, shirtless man inside. "Hey, he's not bad looking."

"In my experience, they rarely are," Asuka said, shrugging. "It seems that even weak vampires are able to shift their appearance somewhat. However, instead of doing something useful with the power, like developing it to mimic people, they seem to just use it to clear up their complexion and smooth over their features and whatnot."

Garo said nothing as he continued to stare at the wall opposite the vault entrance, not at all concerned with the group gathering out in the front. The woman who apparently led this band of psychotics was there, so there was a good chance that he wouldn't be arbitrarily shot again. He had already made his escape attempt for the day, and wasn't eager to get into more trouble.

_Sniff! Sniff!_

Okay, so maybe he was SLIGHTLY concerned with the smell of freshly spilt blood that he recognized as being from the pigtailed man. Though he had calmed considerably from his initial hysteria upon tasting the sweet red nectar, the flavor and rush of power it had brought haunted his mind. Why did he react like this to the man's blood? Did his thirst for it mean that it had addictive properties, or was it a simple desire for superior nourishment? Were there any negative side effects in ingesting such a remarkable substance?

And, most importantly, should he kill the human if he got the chance, and gorge himself only to never experience that exquisite flavor for the rest of eternity? Was there an alternative?

Most people would have been too concerned with being locked up and periodically abused to worry about rationing a particularly tasty human, but Garo had always been one to think ahead.

"Excuse me... Hey! Vampire guy! You awake?"

Garo didn't bother turning, but if he had, he would have noticed a pretty blonde girl with a bow in her hair standing outside the gate. "Yes, I am. What do you want, human?"

"Would you be interested in telling us the location of all your friends and maybe some of the special powers they have with absolutely no promise of getting anything in return?" Minako ventured, causing Asuka to slap herself in the forehead.

This time the vampire did turn, if only to get some visual assurance that the newcomer was serious and not teasing him. "... No, not really." He turned back around.

Minako threw her arms up in dismay. "Well, I'm out of ideas. I'm pretty new to this interrogation thing."

"Yeah, we can tell," Makoto deadpanned. "Hey Ami-chan, do you have..." the brunette trailed off as she saw that Ami was standing behind the rest of the group guzzling a bottle of some murky white liquid that was presumably alcoholic. "Ami! Where did you get that?"

The genius Senshi gasped as she finally stopped chugging the wonderfully powerful booze, and pointed briefly to Seras, who was still sleeping quietly on the floor.

"Oh, forget it. I'LL do it," Makoto growled, reluctantly letting go of Ranma's arm to walk up to the doorway.

"Hey, bloodsucker. You got a name?" Makoto asked, crossing her arms under her breasts.

Garo was silent for a few seconds before he responded. "My name is Garo."

"Garo what?"

"Just Garo. Us... 'bloodsuckers' typically leave our family ties behind when we breach the veil between life and death. I do not have a surname." Of course, he could have told them what his was when he was turned, but that information was both unpleasant to divulge and could give his enemies a distant lead on investigating him.

"Okay Garo-san, I have a question: why do you kill innocent people?" Makoto asked bluntly.

"Innocent people..." the midian echoed. "Hard to say. For the same reason you presumably kill innocent fish, pigs, and cows, I would suppose."

Makoto's eyebrow twitched. "'Fish, pigs, and cows'? That's all people are to you? Food?"

"It would be more accurate to consider them a resource than just food, but yes." Garo looked up at the ceiling, smirking slightly. "The vampire is effectively a different, superior species to man. While humanity is the basis of our kind, and indeed is essential to us, you are of the same caliber as livestock."

Makoto grit her teeth at hearing this, and then snorted. "Well, you must feel pretty embarrassed then, being beaten and captured by a bunch of cows."

Garo nodded curtly. "Indeed. My inherent superiority over you worthless walking feedbags is my only comfort under these circumstances."

Asuka sighed as Makoto balled her hands into fists, her temper getting the better of her. "I knew it would go like this..."

"You bastard! People are dying!" Makoto shouted furiously, clutching one of the bars of the gate separating her from the vault interior. "The entire city is slowly falling apart, and you don't even care? Weren't you human once?"

"It is a condition that many will not outgrow, unfortunately," Garo said, his voice tinged with false regret. "Only the pure and virginal may join the ranks of the vampire. It is our gift to them for their fortitude. And we hope to spread this gift far and wide..."

"Yeah, yeah, we know all about that," Minako said dismissively. "You gather together a bunch of losers and seduce them. Real nice."

"You see it as a crude, twisted conversion. Understandable." The nosferatu chuckled. "To be honest, we vampires too are not so fond of those little 'fang factories'. To us, the conversion of a human is something special and sacred. But current circumstances don't allow for such sentiment."

"I'm still somewhat confused as to what the 'current circumstances' are," Asuka mentioned, looking somewhat annoyed.

"As you shall remain." The vampire turned his head just enough so that the humans outside could make out his grin. "Until you too are consumed."

Makoto glared at the midian's back for a few seconds, then made a disgusted grunt as she backed off. "Forget it. We're not going to get anything but back-talk from this idiot."

Ranma scratched his head for a moment, and then shrugged and stepped forward. "Hey, let me give it a go."

"Eh? If you could get information out of him, shouldn't you have done so already by now?" Minako asked.

"It isn't really my department," Ranma explained, dusting off his shirt and taking a deep breath.

_Clang!_ Then he put his foot against the silver bars.

"Man, you know, I get injured so often nowadays, sometimes I don't even bother to put on bandages or change my clothes!" Ranma said loudly, causing the others on his side the gate to sweatdrop at the lack of acting.

Garo twitched.

"I mean, look at this! Hunter tore up my legs and I didn't put on so much as a Band-aid before coming down here!"

Garo twitched again.

"I should take care of this before it gets infected. I mean, my pants are soaked and the blood's barely even dried! Look, it's still dribbling all over the floor!"

"GYAH!"

Makoto and Minako flinched back as the vampire suddenly turned and crawled over to the vault entrance on his hands and knees, a crazed expression on his face.

"S-Stop, you fool! Don't waste it!" The midian shouted desperately, stopping just short of the silver bars keeping him from his jailors. He screamed incoherently as a few droplets fell from the wet, damaged pants and splattered on the floor. "Wrap that up! Wrap up that wound right now! Or at least get a cup or something! Augh!"

Minako paled slightly and stepped back. "Well... this is pretty disturbing."

Asuka rolled her eyes. "You weren't here for the earlier episode."

Ranma smirked as Garo glared at him. "What? You want this? You already had your fill today. Why should I give you any more blood?"

Garo trembled mightily, and clenched his teeth shut tightly as he wrestled with the intense craving surging through him.

In response to the vampire's silence, Ranma grabbed the ripped portion of his pants and then tore it off, removing one entire leg at mid-thigh.

"Wh-What are y-you... going to d-do with... that?" Garo asked nervously, a bit of drool leaking out of his mouth.

"What do you think? This thing is soaked and ripped up. It's going in the trash," the martial artist said matter-of-factly.

"N-No! Anything but that!" Garo protested, moving forward to grab through the gates, but then thinking better of it and backing off again.

Ranma snorted. "Why should I give it to you? You won't even tell us anything about the other vampires."

"You're asking me to turn my back on my own people!" Garo growled, slamming a fist into the floor of his cell.

"You turned your back on humanity when it was convenient for you, did you not?" Asuka said suddenly, leaning against the silver gate. "For your own survival and power, you'll forsake anything. Isn't that also what it means to be a vampire?"

Garo clenched his hands into fists as the humans stared at him. "I... I will... not divulge such information so that I may suck drying blood out of a soiled rag," he said with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances (which wasn't a whole lot).

"Hmmm..." Asuka rubbed her chin in thought. "Okay. How about a half vial of the good stuff, then?"

"Wh-What?" She instantly had the vampire's full attention.

"Now that I think about it, we have quite a few of Saotome's blood samples from when we began extracting the R-virus. Tuko uses them as growth catalysts, since he says the virus doesn't replicate in other solutions." Her gaze hardened as she looked down at the vampire. "You tell us what we want to know, and you get a Saotome snack. Deal?"

"... Ugh... Deal," the vampire said shamefully, hanging his head.

Ranma was looking exceptionally pleased by this turn of events until Makoto tugged on his sleeve. "What?"

"Vampire interrogations aside, Ranma-kun," the brunette said uneasily, "you really SHOULD get your legs bandaged up right away after you get injured. It's unsanitary to be walking around like that, especially with blood-drinking monsters running about."

Ranma flushed and scratched the back of his head. "Oh, yeah... that's true..."

"First question," Asuka began, "there's obviously been a sudden explosion in the vampire population. You said yourself that the individuals like yourselves don't appreciate it, so I assume you're being ordered or coerced in some way. Who are you taking orders from, and why are they building up the vampires' numbers?"

Garo groaned slightly, feeling his conflicting emotions and urges well up inside him. "Our master is Vampire Lord Ran. He is the eldest and most powerful of us, and all vampires in Tokyo essentially consider him their master."

"Why's that?" Makoto asked suddenly. "You claim to be all superior and stuff, but your entire race is a bunch of henchmen?"

Garo glared at her. "It is true that our power as nosferatu are restricted by the bonds of servitude; a new vampire obeys the one who turned them without exception. So a new vampire may go out and turn some humans into slaves for himself, but is still slave to the one who turned him. As such, most of the vampiric lines of servitude wind up to Lord Ran, and those that don't have pledged loyalty to him out of respect and fear."

"And what does Ran want?" Asuka asked bluntly.

Garo took a deep breath. "Ran wants to end human dominance on Earth."

Everyone in the room blanched at that.

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" Minako asked nervously.

"At present, despite our superior power, vampires are a race of outcasts that must hide constantly in fear of discovery and subsequent annihilation," Garo explained. "Humans are simply too numerous, organized, well-equipped, and resourceful. And, most important of all, they can pursue us during the day."

Asuka nodded. "Right. Any war that the vampires could wage would have to be put on hold every time the sun comes up. That's a pretty serious problem." Then her eyes narrowed. "Far too serious, actually. No matter how many new vampires you make, you'll never be able to approach the number of humans, and being weak and helpless in the daylight is a critical weakness. How does this clown Ran expect to overcome this?"

"That is..." Garo trailed off. "... Not entirely clear."

"Some leader ya got there," Ranma deadpanned.

"Our future has been foretold," Garo said, shrugging, "and our ascendency assured. This is what Lord Ran tells us. And we follow Lord Ran."

"Okay then. Final question," Asuka said, leaning closer so that she could peer into the midian's eyes. "Where is Lord Ran?"

Garo snorted. "So you **would** attempt to face a full vampire lord... very well, I will mourn only the loss of my new favorite food once you're all dead," he sneered, indicating Ranma.

"Yeah, yeah, spare us," Ranma said. "Where is the freak?"

"Unfortunately, I do not know where he lives. I have only seen him twice," Garo explained. "I can tell you where he frequents, though." The vampire grinned. "Ensure that you do not approach unprepared for death. Pray for a swift, merciful killing."

"Okay, fine, we'll do that," Asuka mumbled negligently, pulling out a notepad. "Address?"

Garo was silent for several seconds. "I really don't think you appreciate the level of terrifying power that you're recklessly pursuing."

_Click!_ By the end of that sentence, the midian had a large, black pistol aimed through the bars of the gate directly at his forehead.

"I don't think YOU appreciate how annoying it is to have to bribe you for answers instead of shooting you in the head," Ranma said in irritation. "'Cause that's what I usually do to undead. It's very satisfying. Wanna see?"

Garo scooted to the side and tried his hardest to pretend that the incredibly tasty and well-armed human wasn't there threatening him. "So, as I was saying, he can be found on occasion at Gintoshi Night Club at Hijon and Mutsuke Avenue."

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Is that another one of those vampire factories?"

"Not at all. While several usual patrons and staff are vampires, the club tailors to the rich and the famous, and would be a poor place to find virgins. Ran and some of the other elites of our kind go there simply to enjoy the comforts of high society like any comparable human. Our every waking hour doesn't have to involve feeding, you know."

Asuka snorted. "Well, that's the only activity we're interested in, thank you much." She turned around. "Ami-chan, are you..."

The police captain trailed off as she found Ami lying on the floor comatose next to Seras, snoring lightly with an empty liquor bottle lying next to her head.

"Er... sorry about that," Minako said awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head, "this is sort of a new thing for her, really!"

'New thing?' Asuka thought, frowning. 'When I saw her the other week, she said she didn't drink...' then her face darkened. 'Wait a minute... does that mean this is my fault?'

"Upsy daisy, Ami-chan!" Makoto called out as Minako pushed the insensate girl up into the piggyback position on top of Makoto. "You know, I don't really object to you turning into a lush, but you should really learn some moderation. This is just one of those places you do NOT want to pass out in."

Getting over her brief pang of guilt, Asuka snorted and glared at Seras. "Doesn't bother some people one bit."

"Mmmmhn," Ami mumbled in her sleep, her face tickled by Makoto's ponytail. "Must... spawn... more... overlords..."

After shooting Ami a strange look along with everyone else, Asuka reared back her leg and gave Seras a solid kick in the side. _Whump!_

"Ow! Wha the 'ell whazzat fer!" The sloshed doctor demanded, his eyes fluttering open as he struggled to sit up.

"That was for indirectly assisting in the corruption of my cousin," Asuka deadpanned, ignoring the minor pangs of her own guilt with practiced ease. "It also served as a quick way to get you up so that you can get fangs here a sample of Saotome's blood from the viral sample case."

"Mmm? Do a barrel roll," Ami murmured.

"Uh? I thought he already fed," Seras said, completely ignoring the insensate girl (he was quite familiar with drunken stupors himself).

"I have an assault to plan; I don't have time to be explaining everything that just happened to you! Now stop gawking and move!" Asuka shouted, causing the faux doctor to scurry away rapidly.

Makoto chuckled as she shifted Ami on her back. "Damn girl, you really lay down the law, don'cha?"

"That IS my job, both in the literal and the practical sense," Asuka murmured, not sure how to feel about the comment.

"Zzzzz... how I mine for fish?" Ami asked.

"Well, that whole experience was really creepy, but we got what we came for!" Minako said excitedly. "Now we can go find Snake and those other guys and then get the vampires!"

Asuka frowned deeply at the mention of Snake. "Hmm... you know, it's about dusk out right now... where ARE Snake and the others?"

* * *

_Blam! Blam!_

"Dear God! What's happening? What's going on?" Minister Hikoshi demanded as he crouched down onto the ground, covering his head with his arms.

"Ugh..." A man with shoulder-length hair staggered backward as blood slowly leaked from the two holes in his chest. "Who... Who the hell?"

As Snake and Rayden stared down the wounded man with pistols drawn, the scattered pedestrians rapidly scattered further, fleeing from what appeared to be a sudden, unprovoked street shooting.

The wounded man gasped as he looked more closely at the gunman in blue. "W-Wait? DAPC?"

Without waiting for an answer, he suddenly darted forward, apparently ignoring the bullet wounds in his ribcage.

Rayden wasted no time himself, and rushed forward to slam a fist into the charging man's stomach before he could reach his more fragile companions. Ignoring the desperate scratching at his arm, the Russian threw him hard into the wall adjacent to the sidewalk.

_WHAM!_ The apparent vampire gasped in agony as his bones and the brick they were pressed against cracked at the same time, spraying bits of rubble out onto the concrete at the same time a glob of body fluids surged up his throat and gushed out of his mouth.

"Tekai, finish him off, would you?" Snake requested casually, scanning the street for any other targets. "Hmm, this guy was a bit early; the sunset hasn't even vanished yet..."

"Hey! Are you listening to me?" Hikoshi shouted, still crouched on the ground. "What's going on? Why did you kill that man?"

"Oh, he's not dead yet," Kyle said conversationally as he approached the trembling midian. "Well... in a way, he is. Sort of. But anyway..." He reared back a fist.

_CRUNCH!_ The relatively small building shook visibly as Kyle pounded a fist into the wall, creating a spread of deep cracks and blood where the vampire's head had been just a second ago.

"There. NOW it's dead for real," the blonde explained happily, tugging his blood-soaked fist out of the wall as the corpse slowly turned to dust.

"Hurry up you two," Snake ordered, moving on once he saw Rayden start walking once more. "Chances are the chick heard the gunshots, so she'll probably pick up the pace."

"What are you saying? Please, let me go home!" Hikoshi begged as Kyle pulled him up by his shirt again and dragged him forward.

"Aw, don't worry about it. If we're running into vampires already, then this shouldn't take much longer. Just try to stay close to us, all right?" Kyle instructed, still apparently oblivious to the minister's terror.

As the group advanced down the street, ignoring the civilians rushing for safety, Rayden glanced over at Snake. "The speed of your attack was rather impressive. You, too, can sense these creatures?"

"Nope," the American said bluntly. "You pulled a gun on a random guy on the street who had clearly never met you before. I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that either he was a monster, or you had decided to ditch the crusader of justice thing and just kill people for the fun of it. Obviously, I had to shoot **one** of you, and I had to do it fast."

Rayden's face darkened. "And you shot a complete stranger based on a fifty percent chance of it being the right thing to do?"

"Not entirely," Snake explained, "there's also the fact that I was already within arms' reach of you. Besides, I hit a non-vital point."

Then he frowned. "How come YOU can sense vampires?"

As he was wont to do, Rayden closed his eyes reverently and clutched the crucifix hanging around his neck. "My faith guides me in all things. The cross rejects these monstrosities and directs me toward their destruction."

"So basically, you listen for the voices in your head and do as they command," Snake offered.

Rayden twitched.

"That happened to me once," Kyle said, inserting his own thoughts to everyone else's dismay. "Everyone else said it was bad, but I kind of liked it; it was like having Captain Takami around all the time, except that all the orders were horrible atrocities."

"Please..." Minister Hikoshi sobbed, "please let me go home!"

"That would be unwise," Rayden said, finally addressing the frightened man once again. "Though I admit it was foolish to bring you into danger such as this, to release you now, when the vampires are emerging into the streets, would leave you in more danger than protecting you through the inevitable conflict ahead."

"If you knew that it was stupid to bring me, why did you let them do it?!" The politician screamed.

Rayden shrugged. "They are the chosen protectors of you and your people. I am but a hammer delivering the righteousness of Heaven upon the darkness. Who am I to judge their decisions on how best to assist a government official?"

_Blam!_ "AAUGH!"

Whatever Hikoshi was going to say about Rayden's propriety in judging the police was forgotten as they suddenly focused their attention on Snake, who had, by the looks of things, suddenly shot someone on the other side of the street in the leg.

Rayden's eyes narrowed. "I thought you could not detect the undead. Why did you fire upon this stranger, then?"

Snake blinked, turning to regard the Russian gunman. "Oh, no, don't worry, I know that guy. He's not a stranger."

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Screamed Mamoru Chiba as he writhed on the ground clutching his leg in pain.

"Oh, don't be such a crybaby! It was only a lousy nine millimeter slug!" The American snorted as he holstered his pistol and then started walking again. "The guy took a freaking Desert Eagle round before; a nine barely qualifies as a bee sting next to that."

"Agreed," Rayden admitted, having himself suffered wounds from both calibers. "However, your assault upon him seems completely arbitrary and quite immoral."

"Says the guy who **seems** to be hunting down a young woman whose only goal is to escape with her life," Snake countered smugly.

"... I see." Rayden coughed into his fist, and then quickly stepped up his pace to pass by Snake and once again lead the small group. "On that note, we must hurry before the trail runs cold. Our target is becoming more agile and capable as the streets darken. Ideally, we should be able to track her to someplace where these creatures take sanctuary, and then crush the entire coven at once."

Snake chuckled. "That's what I'm talking about! Lead the way, church boy!"

Kyle grinned. "Awesome! If we can kill a whole bunch of 'em, maybe we'll get a bonus!"

Hikoshi hiccuped as tears leaked from his eyes. "Why? Why is this happening to me?"

* * *

The aforementioned vampiress stopped in her tracks to take a deep breath of the cool night air as the last glimmering rays of sunlight vanished over the horizon.

New strength and vigor filled her exhausted frame as night fell, and her eyes glowed slightly with the heady rush of energy.

Despite the surge of power, she wasted little time in building her pace back up to a sprint in the opposite direction of her pursuers. After all her bravado in the face of her companion and lover's cowardice, she herself knew when she was outclassed. Putting aside the strange, unnaturally tough Russian man whom she'd never heard of, there was no way that a month-dead vampire such as herself would survive an encounter with the DAPC. It was a mere fluke that she had lasted this long; if it weren't for a good head-start and her pursuers occasionally stopping to shoot other people, she would have been overtaken long ago.

"Just a bit farther," she mumbled to herself, dashing into an alley and leaping up onto the wall to reach the roof.

After looking both ways, she rushed to the edge and cautiously peeked out into the streets.

'Wow... except for the cars, it's almost completely empty,' she thought bleakly.

People in Tokyo at times seemed to have an almost precognitive sense for avoiding the supernatural hazards that dotted the city (probably to compensate for being foolish enough to live there in the first place), which probably served to explain why nine-tenths of showy, mystical battles conveniently occurred when there was nobody around to watch. Tokyo had an enormous population, and despite the growth of the vampire populace, their feeding had barely made a scratch in that number.

'They're adapting faster than Ran had guessed... than anyone had guessed. How long can we really expect these people to lay down and die without a struggle?'

"Hey! Who're you?"

The vampiress whirled around, her eyes wide and her fangs bared, ready to rip apart the newcomer or flee as the situation required.

After seeing and recognizing the intruder as another vampire, she relaxed her posture and immediately went about deciding whether it would be best to try her luck against the officers and the Russian.

"Hm. Don't recognize you," the man mumbled as he looked over the female midian. He was of German descent, and, like most male vampires, was tall and lean, with hard, chiseled muscles all over his body. His style of clothing consisted of a loosely buttoned dress shirt and scarf with wool pants, and his blond hair was done into thick, pointed locks that curled around his face.

Honestly, most people thought that the hairstyle looked like a head crab, but few individuals had the guts to tell him that. And some of those that did have the guts promptly lost them as a direct result of such impudence.

"Ah! I... I don't suppose you would! M-My name is Kimu!" the vampiress stuttered. "It's an honor to meet you, Kliff-sama!"

Kliff stepped closer to the young woman, looking at her more closely. "You've heard of me. That's a point in your favor. What're you doing here?"

Kimu gulped. "Er... why? Should I not be here?" She asked pensively. If he was asking because she was invading his hunting grounds - which only some of the elites such as Kliff kept private - then she could safely say she was being chased by vampire hunters and he would happily dispose of them. If there was another, more important reason, then bringing armed humans in this direction was a VERY bad idea.

Kliff's eyes narrowed, and he looked her up and down.

'PLEASE tell me he's mentally undressing me! Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease!' Not that she had any particular desire to make out with one of the elder vampires, but it was honestly the best turn of events that could occur at this point.

"You're wounded," Kliff said without a drop of sympathy. "Who did this?"

"I d-don't really know who he w-was," the vampiress stuttered before the elder vampire glared at her openly.

"I saw you approach here at a run. And then you immediately leapt up onto the roof and searched the streets," he said matter-of-factly. "Are you **fleeing** someone? Who?"

Kimu squeaked nervously and backed up a step. "N-Nobody! I mean, it was still daylight! I'll go back and take care of them right now!"

Kliff stared at the girl in disgust, and then snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. I can't let anyone interfere with the operation. **I'll** deal with this. Tell me who is pursuing you. What are they armed with?"

The vampiress gulped again. "They're... uh... well, like I said, I don't know... who the first man was, but he used guns! Powerful ones! And he was very tough!"

"I see. And the others?"

The desperately frightened vampire girl was planning on lying for this question, she really was. But for some reason, as the elder nosferatu gazed down at her, she felt the full and unblemished truth pouring out of her lips.

"They're the DAPC. They found the gunman and followed him to track me here; I imagine they'll be here any moment now."

Kliff's rage was palpable as she completed that sentence, and his eyes flared a bright, solid crimson. Kimu was glad that her heart was no longer beating, because if it had been, it would have punched right out of her ribcage.

"I see. Your idiocy is remarkable," the German snapped. "Now get out of my way."

_Shooft!_ A sharp scuffing sound came from Kliff as he suddenly crossed the distance between them faster than even the midian girl could track, a slight blue haze surrounding him.

"Ah! S-Sorry!" Kimu shouted, stumbling backward.

_Shooft!_ The same strange noise came from behind her, and she turned her head to look, fearing that Kliff had teleported behind her and that she was about to back into him.

That particular fear was quite unfounded. As a brief blue shimmer vanished, Kimu suddenly found herself looking over her shoulder at the brightly lit streets of Tokyo... which were about three kilometers away, below her.

"Wha-Wha-WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!"

Down below, Kliff smirked as he stared up at the night sky, his sharp, hawk-like vision able to make out the vampiress's plummeting body as it flailed uselessly in the air.

Connecting two portals over such a long distance was a tremendous waste of energy, but it was by far his favorite method of executing people; the long, drawn-out terror of the plunge was combined with a wonderfully graphic demise at the bottom.

It made a big impression, and not just in the street.

It also allowed him plenty of time to think over his decision to kill the individual and possibly change his mind without at all diminishing the horrifying experience of the victim.

Kliff was doing such a thing now. The girl was weak, and would be of no use to him as anything but a decoy. But at the same time... a decoy could be very useful. His best and oldest friends had been wiped out by the DAPC, and even **he** felt a tinge of nervousness at the thought of fighting them alone. At the same time, he couldn't ask the other vampires he had brought with him to help distract the police from interrupting the ambush; his absence would make things hard enough.

The elder vampire nodded reluctantly, preparing to generate another portal near the ground that would eject her straight up in front of him, on the roof. Gravity would undo its own work and kill her momentum, which would allow her to land painfully, but not fatally.

He didn't stop smirking one bit, though.

"Almost there," the nosferatu mumbled, his hands glowing slightly as the girl's descent neared the height of the tallest buildings in the area, marking the last segment of her fall. "Annnnnnd..."

_Thoom!_ Kliff flinched in surprise as something punched through the girl's body at an angle from below, causing a violent burst of blood and bone, and stalling the body's fall only slightly before it dropped again.

"What in the Hells..."

* * *

"Huh. Not bad," Snake reasoned as he lowered the shortened anti-vehicle rifle. Then he turned toward Rayden, holding the weapon up by the barrel and eyeing it critically. "Good accuracy considering the length, but the kick is absurd. Obviously made for you three-hundred pound super-soldiers."

Rayden shrugged expressionlessly. "This is true. I do not prepare my weapons for use by others."

_Splak!_ A small, brief deluge of blood hit the street several meters away, splattering all over the asphalt as dust fell from the sky at a calmer pace.

"My god! What WAS that? Where did all that blood come from?" Hikoshi howled, seeing no body or any other indication of what Snake had actually shot.

The American tossed the heavy rifle to Kyle, who caught it easily. "Okay, you got anything good in the close-range department? I left home without the heavy arms today, so I need a loaner."

"Of course," Rayden muttered, opening his coat and reaching into the folds before withdrawing his sawed-off shotgun. "Is this more to your liking?"

"Eh, good enough," Snake said, eagerly taking the weapon and checking to ensure it was loaded. "Just the double-barrel? Nothing in an automatic?"

"When it comes to shotguns I prefer simpler arms," the Catholic said simply. Personality-wise, he considered himself to be nearly the polar opposite of Snake, but the pair certainly shared a common skillset.

"I can see the appeal," Snake allowed, snapping the weapon shut and raising it into the air.

Then he lowered it to his side, pointing it straight at Kliff's nose. "What do you think, bloodsucker?"

Rayden's eyes promptly narrowed, and he took a step back at the same time Kyle took aim with the rifle he was given.

Kliff raised an eyebrow as he stared down the shotgun's barrel, mildly impressed that the human had picked up his presence even before he had adjusted his senses from the teleportation.

"I can't say I'm very fond of guns," the vampire admitted. "Loud, bothersome, irritating weapons. No elegance or finesse to them."

"Elitist jackass." Snake deadpanned. Then he pulled the trigger.

_BLAM!_ Rayden's eyes widened as Snake was suddenly blasted forward into the street, immediately rolling to lessen the impact best he could when he hit the ground heavily.

"Hmph. So reckless, so hasty," the German said casually, a wave of translucent blue shimmering in front of his face. "Really, do you intend to do battle before introductions?"

"Snake! Snake, what happened?" Kyle asked in a panic, wondering if he should run out to help the American and leave the finance minister unprotected.

Hikoshi himself had finally resigned himself to silence, and was curled up in the fetal position behind Kyle's legs. He didn't know what was happening, and at least recognized that any further actions on his part could only reduce his chances of survival.

"Ghhuh! S-Sonuva..." Snake clenched his teeth as he fought against the pain in his back; though his armor vest had blocked the shot from penetrating, the force of the impact had been punishing.

Kliff smiled viciously, revealing his lengthened canines. "I am-"

"You are a dead man," Rayden said stonily, interrupting the midian. "The only right a dead man has to a name is the memories he leaves and the inscription on his headstone. Do not waste my time, vampire."

The elder vampire's mood soured immediately. "You're a cheeky one. Who are you supposed to be? You don't look like a cop."

The Russian snorted, and then grabbed the bundle over his shoulder with both hands before taking a firm hold of the cloth that it was wrapped up in. "I tire of speaking to walking cadavers. Begone, scum." _Shrrp!_

* * *

Rei panted lightly as she jogged down the main walk into the commercial plaza, her hands tucked into the pockets of a nylon jacket as she scanned the area.

The plaza was well-lit during the night and shielded from the wind by a veritable wall of large commercial structures, and in less dangerous times it was a favorite spot of the homeless and destitute to stay for the night.

In recent times, however, the plaza was perfectly empty and clean at night, which was a small comfort to the shop owners; they had thousands in janitor's fees cleaning up the bloodstains before the general public found out.

"Mmm... there!" Rei noticed a figure standing silently in the shadow of a shop awning, and slowed herself as she approached, looking perfectly composed.

"Nagase-kun?"

The figure turned slightly, though in the darkness Rei still couldn't make out the face.

"H... Hino-san?" A soft, scratchy voice said.

And then, without further delay, the figure burst from the shadows, dashing toward the Senshi of Mars.

"Ah! Hino-san!" Tsuna cried, latching onto the raven-haired woman desperately. "I'm so glad it's you! I was really scared!"

Rei sweatdropped as the aspiring journalist fought to contain her tears. "Well, why did you want to meet all the way out here at night, anyway?"

"I didn't think about it at the time!" Tsuna complained. "We always met in the evening in some place isolated before, right?"

"Well, yeah, but it's totally unnecessary," Rei said bluntly.

"But that's how it's done in the movies!"

The fire Senshi rolled her eyes as she patted the shorter girl on the shoulders. "Whatever. I'm just glad you're okay. I heard gunfire..."

"Yeah, I know! Do you think we should check it out?" Tsuna turned toward the main street worriedly.

"No, I really don't think we should," Rei said firmly. "Let's just find someplace inside where it's safe. I have a... feeling."

Letting go of Tsuna the raven-haired woman stared up at the crescent moon hanging in the sky.

"Yes... something bad is going to happen tonight. I can feel it..."

* * *

Vampires destroyed: 5  
Plot pretexts established: 2  
VG Cats references milked for cheap laughs: 1  
Industrial-grade machines totaled: 1  
Core soldiers granted an unexpected day off: 2

End Chapter 9 


	10. The Phoenix Descends

"Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been associated with long delays."  
- Sun Tzu

"The main difference between being quick and being reckless is whether you win or lose; judgments like that are always made after the fact, I've noticed."  
- Asuka Takami

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **computer readouts**, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 10  
The Phoenix Descends  
********************************************************************

"I'm still not sure about this idea," Makoto said as she stripped off her shirt, stuffing it in an open, unused locker. On the door of the locker hung a shimmering evening gown of a deep, rich green, and a pair of matching pumps on the floor. "I mean, I'm normally all for charging headfirst into the enemy, but it seems to me that we're pretty much asking to be ambushed, here."

Asuka placed her body armor on the long bench running through the middle of the locker room, giving it a long, regretful look before turning toward her own dress: a black silk Chinese dress with an elaborate patchwork of vines and flowers stretched over it. "I usually prefer not to take things too quickly, but in this case time is of the essence," she explained as she unbuttoned her uniform. "Not only are the vampires quietly killing off innocent humans every night, but the longer we wait, the longer they have to regroup. They're more numerous than we are, and have the advantage of secrecy. When they attacked us, they were obviously surprised to find that we were more than competent defenders. The next time they came, they were small groups who acted independently and unintelligently. But if we give the vampires enough chances to learn from their mistakes, they will. I intend to take the battle to the enemy before they fully realize what they're up against."

On the other side of Makoto, Minako nodded as she admired herself - clad only in her black silk underwear - in a full-length mirror next to the locker she was using. Hanging from it's door was a strapless silver top and a miniskirt combo. "Look at it this way, Mako-chan: we got an excuse to go shopping, AND you get to go to a ritzy club with Ranma-kun!"

The taller girl grimaced as she adjusted her dress. "I was kind of hoping it would be, you know, a little more private? I really didn't want to deal with any man-eating monstrosities, either. Kills the mood. And your date."

"Well, I guess we could try and find the head vampire guy and let you and Ranma-kun eat dinner, or something," Usagi said uncertainly from behind Asuka. She had already changed into a long, flowing white gown that split on the sides mid-thigh, as she found out just minutes ago that whatever strange device that created the armored bodysuit could also synthesize a perfectly workable wardrobe at will. It was quite a handy ability, and one that she really wished she had been aware of before she had attacked Ranma for seeing her change.

Ami rubbed her head as she tried to recover her faculties lost in her earlier drinking binge. She was wearing a blue-striped blouse and a polka-dot miniskirt of the same color pattern, being much less fashion-conscious than any of the others. Also, she had been drunk at the time. "I think this is a little more important than that, Usagi-chan. Besides, Saotome-kun is on-mission. I'm almost POSITIVE there are regulations to consider."

"Focus, ladies, FOCUS," Asuka said, patting down her dress. "This is NOT an innocent night on the town. Although our enemy does not know we're coming, I have absolutely no reason to expect that we'll find him without getting into a fight somehow. Saotome and Kino will be following the rest of us, and they will be ready for combat." She crossed her arms over her chest as she made eye contact with Makoto. "That means keep your tongue out of his mouth until AFTER the mission is over."

Makoto frowned at the police captain. "So, what, now we take orders from you?"

Asuka raised an eyebrow at the taller girl. "That's a valid point. Tsukino!"

Usagi squeaked awkwardly and straightened. "Wh-What?"

"These people answer to you, right?" Asuka demanded, jabbing a thumb behind her at Makoto.

At Usagi's hesitant nod, Asuka pointed at her. "Despite being YOUR superior, as the rest of the Senshi aren't police officers, I have no authority over them. Thus, it will be YOUR responsibility to keep track of these girls, manage communication if we get separated, and direct their movements strategically. Got it?"

Usagi's face darkened. "What? Me? Why do I have to do all that?"

"Well, you ARE their leader," Asuka deadpanned, "that's a leader's job. What did you do before?"

"I mostly gave long speeches, finished off enemies when they were weak, and brought everyone else back to life after they all died," Usagi said honestly, scratching the side of her head.

The other Sailors winced. "Well, I guess I'll do what you say just for tonight," Makoto mumbled with a sweatdrop rolling down her head. Sure, she really did appreciate being resurrected, but would have much preferred to avoid death in the first place. Asuka seemed to be painfully hard-nosed and bossy, but she definitely had a better grasp of strategy than Usagi could have hoped for.

"Excellent. I think things will be much simpler that way." The police captain finished strapping a .45 caliber sidearm to her leg with a thigh holster, and then began strapping a combat knife to the other leg.

Minako winced. "Are you really going with that thing? What use is a gun on a vampire, anyway?"

"Regardless of how useful it is, it's suicide to walk into a situation like the one we're facing unarmed," Asuka countered evenly. "Of course, I do have three magical girls, a first-class cyborg, and a master martial artist to cover me, but I didn't survive this long by keeping my hands clean."

"Well, yeah, but you could at least find a matching holster instead of that ugly brown one. It really stands out like that," Minako reasoned, eliciting an annoyed twitch from the police captain.

Makoto shrugged. "I dunno, it could be good. Her legs are her best feature, don't you think?"

"I guess, but it doesn't do much good to draw a guy's attention there when they're just going to get scared off by the gun, you know?"

Ami cocked her head to the side as she observed Asuka's forlorn expression. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Asuka mumbled. "I'm just not used to being around normal girls, I guess. Or normal guys, for that matter. I can't remember the last time I've been involved in a conversation about fashion."

"Yeah, you do sort of have a crazy job," Makoto admitted as she spent a few final moments fussing with her hair. "I mean, sure, we fight monsters too, but you guys are **hardcore**."

"Such is the life of the intrepid police officer," Asuka mumbled. "Now are we ready to go or what?"

"Ready!" Minako and Makoto said at the same time, picking up their respective handbags.

Asuka nodded firmly and exited the locker room, stepping into the hall with the other women behind her.

"All right. Saotome, are you ready?" She called in the direction of the mens' locker room.

"Yeah, I'm right here," said a voice behind her.

Usagi promptly yelped at Ranma's sudden appearance and stumbled into an equally surprised Makoto, sending them both crashing to the floor in front of Ami.

"Gah! Too... heavy! Can't... breathe!"

"Ack! Sorry! Sorry! Oof!"

Ranma sweatdropped as he tugged Usagi off of her fellow Senshi and back onto her feet. "Geez, did I scare you that bad? Be more careful, all right?"

Asuka rolled her eyes, being more experienced with Ranma's sudden appearances and other quirks. "Stop messing around, Saotome. Are you ready to go?"

The pigtailed man was dressed in a full tuxedo and lace tie, and looked more like he was attending a wedding rather than a night club.

"Did you actually rent a tux for this?" Minako asked.

Ranma blinked. "No. This is my tuxedo."

"Not that I particularly care, but WHY would you own a tuxedo?" Asuka asked, looking him over. She had to admit that he looked good, but couldn't imagine someone like Ranma owning anything fancier than a proper sweater.

"There are all sorts of places you can't get into unless you're well-dressed," Ranma explained solemnly. "One of the tenets of my school of martial arts is to adapt to any environment in order to achieve victory. If that means following an opponent to a party or ball or even a wedding, I need to be prepared."

"Wouldn't it get messed up from fighting?" Makoto asked bluntly.

"Being really good at sewing is another tenet of my school of martial arts," Ranma continued, nodding. "We tend to be really poor, you see."

"Yeah, okay, great, shut up," Asuka said quickly. "Are you armed? I don't see your pistol on you."

"I've got it, don't worry," Ranma said, smirking. His smirk only twitched slightly when Makoto smoothly wrapped her arm around his, effectively securing herself to the pigtailed cop.

Asuka didn't see how Ranma could conceal the Jackal so easily, but quickly reasoned that concealing items too large to be easily concealed was one of the less impossible things she had seen Ranma do. "Okay, good. Let's move out, then. Saotome, you're with me. Kino-san and Tsukino will follow us as backup. Aino-san, you're in charge of keeping Ami-chan sober for the rest of the night."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" Ami asked, indignant.

"It means that vampires are going to be the least of **my** problems," Minako murmured, looking miserable.

As Ami fumed about the slanderous exchange and Makoto sulked about having to stick with Usagi instead of Ranma, Usagi's brow creased as she looked around the hall.

"Are we the only ones going? What about the other officers?"

Asuka shrugged as she moved toward the exit. "This was a last-minute arrangement, so I couldn't get in touch with any of the people who would actually be useful. I can't imagine what Snake is doing right now, but it would seem that he's off the hook for combat duty tonight."

* * *

_Braa-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah!_

"GYAH! CUT IT OUT! STOP SHOOTING AT HIM!" Snake screamed, rolling desperately across the ground as bullets rained down upon him from a strategically placed portal. He eventually managed to roll under a nearby car, and he grit his teeth in frustration as he soon heard the sound of bullets impacting the vehicle exterior.

Rayden did as the American requested, frowning deeply at the vampire standing in the middle of the street grinning at them.

"Ha ha ha ha ha! Come on, now! Don't give up so easily!" Kliff taunted, one hand in his pocket while the other was pointing to the shimmering pane of spacial disruption that was shielding him. "If you don't shoot, you'll never kill me! I haven't even shown you my full power yet!"

Kyle, who was still standing over minister Hikoshi, growled and tightened his grip on the heavy rifle he had gotten from Rayden, unable to figure out the strange mechanism by which bullets kept heading towards the vampire but hitting his allies.

"What's the matter? Have you insipid brutes given up already?" Kliff taunted, an infuriating grin on his face. "Humans and their guns. The moment a bullet can't solve all your problems, you really are helpless, aren't you?"

Kyle's combat instincts triumphed over his far weaker common sense, and he raised his weapon to aim at the cocky vampire's smiling face.

_Blam!_ Predictably, the shell vanished en route to the target, and Rayden grunted as it zipped past him and stabbed into the ground, barely missing his back and blasting apart a portion of the street uselessly.

The super soldier hesitated only a moment before he grit his teeth and suddenly sprinted for the elder vampire, his weapon held securely over his shoulder.

"Yes! Come on, fight me! It's no fun if you don't struggle!" Kliff gloated, putting both hands in his pockets as the Russian leapt at him.

_Shooft!_ The midian vanished as soon as Rayden punched for his face, and the gunman immediately turned around to block a sudden slash coming from behind. _Skrak!_

"Ha ha ha! Not too shabby!" Kliff cheered, his claws scraping against the hardened steel of Rayden's gun.

_Shooft!_ The vampire vanished again just as Kyle attempted to bring a fist down onto his head, and the genetically altered blond barely managed to stop himself from stumbling into his vigilante ally.

Across the street, Kliff swiftly withdrew one hand from his pocket and thrust a punch directly forward into a smaller, plate-sized portal in front of him.

_Thwock!_ Kyle staggered backward as a fist seemingly came out of nowhere and hit him in the nose, backing into Rayden.

The fist promptly disappeared as Kliff tugged his hand back, and then the elder vampire pointed at a random car parked in the street. Immediately, the car dropped down into the portal that had appeared below it, no longer having anything to resist the dread call of gravity.

It found new allies in that endeavor in Rayden and Kyle, both of whom grunted painfully when the car suddenly crashed down on top of them from a portal a mere ten feet above.

"These games grow tiresome," Rayden growled, pushing himself upright as Kyle shook his head.

Kliff raised an eyebrow as he watched the Russian man shove the car off of himself with ease, and cracked his knuckles. "Heh. You're a tough one, aren't you? Killing you will take time..." the vampire swept one hand forward in a shimmering arc, and Rayden flinched back as he felt something slash across his back. "Luckily, I have all night to finish you off! Don't give up, now!"

Kyle rubbed his head anxiously as the German vampire taunted them. "R-Rayden-san, what should we do? We can't hit him!"

"This is your area of expertise, is it not?" Rayden said as he readied Judgment, looking for an opportunity to fire. "Why do you look to me for the solution?"

"I don't know how to deal with this!" The blond man complained, leaping out of the way as another car suddenly came crashing down from above. "If Captain Takami were here, she'd know what to do! Or... Or Ranma! He'd take care of this!"

"Well, barring the appearance of any deus ex machina, we must find a way to fight back!" Rayden shouted, lurching back and forth as a number of slashes originated from portals all around him.

"Damn you!" The gunman snarled, raising Judgment and switching the weapon from its machine gun to its cannon.

_Clank!_ The Russian blinked as a piece of metal rebar suddenly appeared and stuck itself into the back of the massive weapon, jamming the hammer.

"Now, now... that toy is a bit too dangerous to be playing with in civilian territory, don't you think?" Kliff said, kicking another length of rebar from the ground up into his hand.

Kliff thrust the second piece through another portal, and Kyle barely managed to grab it in time as it appeared barely a foot away and stabbed at his throat.

_Clink!_ The vampire turned sharply as he heard something metal bounce on the ground, and then quickly created a new portal to catch the frag grenade that was bouncing toward him, ejecting it behind the parked truck where Snake was taking cover.

Snake grinned as the grenade tumbled out onto the sidewalk at his feet, and then swiftly kicked it back where it came from.

"Gotcha, freak!" The weapons expert exulted, turning to watch as the grenade came back out of the portal that had been originally used to intercept it... and then bounced across the street back toward its owner. "Oops."

_BOOM!_

Kliff turned just in time to redirect a shot from Kyle's heavy rifle, and Rayden shouted painfully as the massive bullet appeared seemingly from nowhere and stabbed into his back, sending the super soldier to his knees.

"Ha ha ha ha ha! Do you see? Do you see now how useless your resistance is? The 'great and feared DAPC' is NOTHING before the might of the nosferatu!" Kliff crowed, stepping forward onto a car as he advanced on Rayden and Kyle's position.

Kyle stepped back awkwardly, glancing back at Tokyo's finance minister, who was watching the battle in a state of shock and disbelief. Then his gaze turned back onto the vampire. "I'm sorry, but we can't lose here," he confided, speaking in that calm, rational tone that he always used when conversing with his targets. "We have someone to protect, you see. The captain wouldn't like it."

Kliff snorted and barely choked back a laugh as he walked up the length of the vehicle onto the hood, moving closer to the pair of mutants. "That's adorable. Really. But if you recall, you can't hit me, and your allies are both injured."

A cough came from the side, and Kliff lolled his head to the side negligently as Snake staggered out into the street, blood trickling from his forehead and his left leg. The Texan was smirking, which might have disturbed Kliff had the man's last idea not failed so completely.

"Ah, but if YOU recall, that's the car I rolled under earlier," Snake said, tightening his grip on a small cylinder in his hand.

The vampire raised an eyebrow. "I fail to see-" _BWA-BOOM!!_

Suffice to say, Kliff's snotty retort was lost in the expenditure of two pounds of high-grade plastic explosives combined with the fuel tank of a 2002 Mitsubishi, along with all the mass that usually accompanied such objects.

Both Rayden and Kyle shielded their eyes as pieces of automobile and vampire flew past them, trailing smoke and flame.

Turning, Rayden immediately focused onto the torso of the unholy creature. "There! Destroy it!" He shouted, grabbing the chunk of metal stuck in his gun and trying to wrench it out of the firing mechanism.

Kliff's scorched body, which was now bereft of both legs and half of one arm, glowed ominously despite the fire licking at his flesh. "Guh! You... Ah!"

The midian's torso trembled as it floated up into the air, and Kyle gasped as he watched the missing limbs materialize in flashes of otherwordly light next to the severed joints.

"You... You will PAY for that!" The nosferatu snarled, his eyes flaring a brilliant red. "I will-"

_BWOOM!_ Kliff was once again reduced to several small chunks as Rayden's cannon shell pounded his levitating chest, sending flaming undead bits showering all over the sidewalk.

"What are you waiting for?" Rayden shouted at Kyle, who flinched back.

"But if we shoot, then those portals-"

"His concentration is broken!" The vigilante shouted, "Fire now!"

Unsure of what, exactly, he should be firing at with the vampire reduced to bits, Kyle took aim at a burning leg and fired, splitting apart the hapless limb and splattering it all over the street.

_Spluck!_ Rayden stomped on a hand that was writhing on the ground near him, and then scanned the streets for any sign of the head or torso, which contained the midian's most precious organs.

"Skreee!" All at once, the darkness of the ground seemed to come alive as the pieces of vampire exploded in a flurry of fur and flesh.

"Whoa!" Kyle leapt back as the wave of bats shot up into the sky, fluttering all around him in a leathery cyclone. "What the heck?"

"Damnation! Fire! It's getting away!" Rayden screamed as he switched Judgment back into machine gun mode.

"There's too many!" Kyle complained as he grabbed one of the fleeing mammals out of the air and squashed it in his hand, which he reasoned was no less effective than trying to shoot them down with an anti-armor rifle. The creature immediately turned to green vapor in his hand, rapidly dissipating away into nothing.

_Braa-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah!_

Rayden grit his teeth as a swath of green lit up the night sky, his effort and ammunition taking out a tiny fraction of the swarm.

Before the vigilante could come up with a new strategy, however, the bats all converged in a single spot, and then suddenly vanished in a bright green flare of light.

_Thud!_ Rayden planted his weapon on the ground as he fell to one knee, his face slightly more grim than usual. "We... We have failed..."

"Yeah. Boo hoo. Poor us," Snake muttered, limping over to the pair of super-soldiers while using Rayden's shotgun as a crutch. "Of course, we're all still alive, so I'm going to call this a minor victory for team human."

"Snake! Are you okay?" Kyle asked fearfully, rushing over to his subordinate.

"I'll be fine as soon as I find something to dig the shrapnel out of my leg," the American muttered. "But that can wait. How's our guest?"

Hikoshi, surprisingly, was rising to his feet, though he looked quite shaken by what he had just gone through. "I... I'm fine..." the man said, as if in wonder that it was true.

"Excellent. Let's get you home," Snake said, yawning. "Then it's off to the emergency room for me."

Rayden stood up, frowning. "It is good that this man you placed in danger is safe, but what of our target?"

"Who cares?" Kyle asked. "We killed the one you were chasing, and we beat the other one, even if he did get away."

"I am concerned by the sudden appearance of such a powerful midian," the Catholic gunman explained. "Judging by the lack of other vampires attacking, he was not part of a greater attack upon us. Why was he here? Why would he risk his life to assault us alone when he could have escaped without alerting us at all?"

"I hate to say this under any circumstances, but I agree with the commander," Snake said, yawning. "Who cares? We ARE his enemy, after all. All that matters at this point is that we won."

"S-Sorry to interrupt," Hikoshi said timidly, standing up straight. "But... that... that **thing**. Do you... Do you really fight things like that all the time?"

Snake raised an eyebrow and looked at Kyle. "Like **that**? Well, he was a cut above your garden variety freak, but in general, yeah, that is the sort of thing we deal with. Why?"

The finance minister staggered backward, stunned. "That... That's insane! How have you survived?"

Rayden shrugged. "It is difficult to say, but I can assure you that competence has little to do with it." Snake stuck out his tongue at the gunman.

"I had... I had no idea," Hikoshi mumbled as he stepped up to Snake.

"Yeah, well, all told, it's better that way," the Texan said, not sure where the official was going with all this. Considering the man's earlier behavior, Snake naturally assumed he'd be even more furious after the danger had passed, but the old man seemed almost... chastened.

Rayden looked around the streets, frowning. "We should hurry. There is no telling what else is out here, and we are injured."

"Right, right. Let's get out of here."

* * *

"In here! Come on!" Rei shouted, kicking open the door to a storage garage.

Tsuna followed the raven-haired woman dubiously, constantly glancing around her. "Do you know where you're going? What are we even running from?"

"That's a question I'd prefer not to know the answer to, if I can avoid it," Rei groused, grabbing the other girl's arm and leading her further into the dark building. "There's something out there... and hopefully, it's more interested in that gunfire that we heard earlier than it is in us."

Rei opened the door at the end of the garage, and opened it silently before slinking down the dark hallway, conspiracy journalist in hand.

"Hino-san, how can you even see?" Tsuna complained. "It's pitch black in here!"

Rei hissed quietly as she heard a sudden scuff of shoes against tile that wasn't from her or Tsuna. "Well, then... let's get some **light**!"

_Fzash!_ Tsuna shouted in surprised as a sudden flare of light came from Rei's hand, blinding her.

Rei frowned deeply as she held up the glowing Shinto talisman that she had snatched from her purse. Two men had stopped dead only a few meters away down the hall, covering their eyes from the sudden brightness.

"What a lousy ambush. If it's this easy to catch you by surprise, why even bother?" Taking out two more talisman wards from her purse, Rei threw them at her attackers, smirking as they sailed straight through the air and then stuck themselves onto the men's faces.

"Hrgh! Wha th' 'ell?" "C-Can't... move!" Both of the men twitched as their muscles locked up in place, unable to do much more than tremble.

Rei clicked her tongue. "Vampires. Damn."

"Wh-What? How do you know?" Tsuna asked, startled.

In response, the part-time priestess grabbed one of the vampires' cheek, stretching it away from the teeth to reveal unnaturally pointed fangs. "There's a big hint. So what're you weirdos doing here? Kind of a lonely place to be hunting for food."

One of the midians managed to force his lips into a crude, uncertain smile. "We're not... hunting for food... W-We've got... a m-much better t-target," he managed to stutter out.

As Rei glared down at the paralyzed vampire, Tsuna leaned forward to stare at the intricate drawing on the talisman. "Hino-san, what are these slips of paper?"

"They're Shinto wards," Rei replied tensely. "I was a shrine maiden all through high school. They're effective against all sorts of monsters."

"Even vampires?" Tsuna asked in wonder.

"Yeah," Rei sighed, slapping another talisman onto Tsuna's back, "even vampires."

_Gzrk!_ "EEYAAH!!" Tsuna screamed as a sudden jolt of pure agony ran up and down her spine, and she collapsed in a heap a moment later.

Rei's eyes were stern, but somewhat shaky as she stared at Tsuna's gaping mouth, and the pointed, needle-like fangs that had replaced her ordinary incisors. "Unbelievable," she spat. "You too? You're part of this too?"

"W-Wait!" Tsuna said weakly, coughing as she felt the effects of the ward start to diminish. "Please! I had no choice! They took me by surprise! I have to obey them! It's like mind control!"

Rei's expression didn't change. "They got to you so fast, too... why? What are they after, Tsuna?"

"You haven't-ugh-figured that out yet?" One of the paralyzed vampires said through clenched teeth. "We're after **you**!"

"Well, that would have been my first guess," Rei allowed, not taking her eyes off Tsuna, "but that kind of begs the question of why a bunch of monsters would want me so badly. I mean, seriously? Turn one of my friends and then lead me into an ambush? I'm flattered, but I'd think that you'd all have better things to do."

Tsuna turned over so that she was no longer lying on her belly, though she made no threatening movements. "Hino-san... you're Sailor Mars, aren't you?"

Rei raised an eyebrow. "What? Sailor Mars? What are you talking about?"

Tsuna shook her head. "You can't fool me so easily, Hino-san. I've known for a while now, or at least suspected for a while. Why do you think I sought you out to begin with? Corroborating rumors is my specialty, you know?"

"Yeah, and look at where it got you," Rei spat. "So, you sold out my secrets and lured me into a trap. Anything else I have to look forward to? Are you keeping my family hostage in the next room, too?"

Tsuna winced at the acid in the taller girl's voice. "I told you, I can't help it! I have no free will anymore; if they say jump, my body just jumps!"

"I've had enough of this," Rei growled, turning away from Tsuna and walking past the two paralyzed vampires. "Nagase, I suggest you pick up whatever scraps of willpower you have left and run. I'm going to need a little while to sort this all out, but I'm pretty sure that 'Sailor Mars' won't be too happy to see you if you ever meet her face to face."

Tsuna shook her head. "Hino-san, please! Be reasonable! There's more of us waiting! There's no way to escape! We don't want to hurt you, but if-"

"Reasonable? REASONABLE?!" Rei snapped, her eyes flashing. "I'm surrounded by... by murderous, blood-sucking, filthy **animals** who know my most dangerous secrets, and you want me to be reasonable?" The feeling of anger, betrayal and regret that had been building rapidly ever since sensing Tsuna's undeath reached a peak, and Rei's henshin rod was in her hand with a snap of her wrist. "Maybe it's just the company I've been hanging around lately, but right now, burning you all to cinders seems **real** reasonable."

"Wh-What? Wait! Not yet!" One of the paralyzed vampires shouted, doubling his effort to move.

Rei's eyes narrowed at Tsuna, who gulped nervously and started crawling away backwards. "Nagase, consider your rumor 'corroborated'. Mars crystal power, make up!"

* * *

"Wow, this is a really nice place," Minako said, whistling softly as she got out of the taxi van and stared at the entrance to the Gintoshi Night Club.

The entrance was an elegant array of gilded steel poles and glass, and sat under a whirlwind of colored lights that managed to look both festive and dignified. Every few seconds, a couple dressed in impeccably costly outfits would exit their vehicles and hand their keys to the valet before meeting with the obscenely muscular bouncer manning the door previous to being allowed in.

Asuka took a moment to appreciate that most of the couples seemed to consist of old, balding men and woman forty years younger than them, and then shelved her feminism to give the mission at hand her full concentration. "All right, is everybody ready?"

"So, how are we going to get in?" Makoto asked as they approached the club. "Do you just flash your badge?"

Asuka shook her head. "Of course not. Being a cop doesn't give you free license to go anywhere you'd like. I can't force them to let me in legally without probable cause and a warrant. Besides, it would cause an uproar, and we're trying to be inconspicuous here."

"Are you going to bribe the bouncer, then?" Ami asked, looking worried.

"Again, not great for avoiding attention. Plus, it's expensive," the police captain explained as she led the others past the entrance toward the parking lot behind the structure.

Minako raised an eyebrow. "Uh... where are we going?"

"Hold that thought," Asuka mumbled as they stepped into the parking lot, where the rear of the building was visible. In the center of the rear wall was a single reinforced door which had another butler leaning against it, puffing on a cigarette.

Asuka frowned. "Saotome, what's this guy about?"

Ranma shrugged. "Definitely a vampire. Nothing scary, though." He mumbled as they all approached the door, alerting the man.

Asuka's frown turned into a grimace. "Ugh, and a smoker, too. Make it painful, Saotome," she ordered, drawing a line across her throat with her thumb.

The bouncer turned toward the group, his eyes narrowing as the only male among them suddenly picked up his pace to get to meet him first. "Hey, you can't come this way, you have-"

The man stopped speaking mid-sentence as the pigtailed fellow in the tuxedo suddenly bolted into the air and rebounded off the wall of the club before vanishing in a blur of motion.

"Wh-What? Where did..." the confused guard turned around to glance behind him, and thus didn't see as Ranma suddenly fell straight down in front of him instead, kodachi in hand.

_Sshlk!_ The girls other than Asuka winced as Ranma plunged the blade into the bouncer's chest, causing the much larger man to gasp painfully and fall to his knees.

"Painful it is," Ranma said semi-regretfully, holding a hand over the vampire's mouth as he twisted his weapon while it was still lodged in his victim's heart.

Ami and Usagi looked away as the hapless guard let out a muffled scream of agony, and both sighed as he turned to dust.

"Damn girl, that was a bit harsh, don't you think?" Makoto asked, raising an eyebrow.

Asuka shrugged. "If I have to spend a few minutes standing around in his stupid toxic smoke cloud, then I think it's only fair that his death be slightly longer and more painful than it has to be. Tsukino!" She said suddenly, snapping her fingers.

"Y-Yes!" Usagi said immediately, straightening reflexively.

"Rip this door! Saotome, find the valet and neutralize him, if you can. We don't want anyone investigating the rear entrance, and we want to discourage more civilians from entering the club."

Ranma nodded and promptly dashed back around the corner of the building as Usagi stepped up to the door.

"Hmmmm..." the blonde cyborg frowned and raised her hands, her index fingers each opening up into strange, delicate-looking tools; her left finger resembled a soldering iron, except wide and flat, while her other was a long, thin rod with several whirling spines near the end of it.

"Uh... should I break the lock, or pick it?" Usagi wondered aloud.

Asuka crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, do you have any experience in picking locks?"

Usagi shook her head no; the most subterfuge she'd ever done was magical disguises.

"Okay. Do you have any experience cutting things with searing hot energy?"

Usagi nodded happily.

"Well then, stick to what you know," Asuka said simply, feeling more pleased than annoyed for once when Usagi grinned and got to work.

Makoto looked about the parking lot pensively. "Are you sure we should be sneaking in like this? What if we get caught?"

Asuka looked grim as she responded. "Then we should be prepared to fight. Ultimately we're here for information, which can come from files or people." She shook her head. "For now, just concentrate on blending in. Ami-chan, you and Aino-san will start searching the offices. Search for any paperwork that has to do with the patrons, or any strange or unique problems involving the patrons. Tsukino, Kino-san, you're with me and Saotome. First we'll help secure the offices, and then we're going to scour the actual club to search for targets, and run interference on anyone trying to get to the back."

"Right!" Usagi said brightly, smiling as she finished cutting through the lock bolt. "It's open!"

A moment later, Ranma suddenly fell straight down onto the asphalt, seemingly from nowhere, though this time he landed in front of the girls so as not to scare anyone.

"Saotome, how's that valet?" Asuka asked.

"Taking a nap. He'll be fine when he wakes up, though," Ranma assured her.

The police captain nodded. "Then let's get in there. Remember everyone, if you get caught, try to contact me or bluff your way out, but don't be afraid to take someone down if you have to. Still, discretion is the name of the game here. Move out."

* * *

The inside of the club was no less impressive than the outside, with even the offices being built with ornate oaken doors and filled with fine antiques for decoration. In place of efficient filing cabinets and bulky desktops, the offices had rows of hardwood drawers for storing documents, and wireless keyboards typed in commands on wide plasma screens built into the walls. Every square foot of the building was layered in wealth and opulence, testament to the enormous success and power of its owner.

Though all told, it was hard to feel exceptionally successful and powerful when your bodyguards were on the floor unconscious and a blonde girl half your size had you in a headlock.

"Let go of me, damn you! Do you have any idea who I am?" The large, portly owner shouted, struggling fiercely under Usagi's arm. Ranma stood near the entrance to the main office, frowning at the guards.

"No, actually, we don't," Asuka admitted, walking up to the man casually and then leaning over to rest her elbows on his desk. "And we don't really care. We're here for someone else, and you can either help us find him, or we can just knock you out and ransack your little club until we get what we want."

"I'll never help you!" The owner growled. "Release me!"

Usagi, for her part, looked rather nervous, not being used to playing the part of the common muscle in any of her previous adventures. "Asuka-chan, are you sure we should be doing this?"

"Address me as CAPTAIN," Asuka snapped, "and don't use my name in front of this clown! I don't want any trouble from him later!"

"Oh, you won't get trouble from me," the owner spat, "I have friends though. Lots of friends. Just **thinking** of all the things they could do with a bunch of uppity broads like you, why..." He started grinning vindictively, and Minako and Makoto both shuddered in disgust.

Asuka was unperturbed. "Friends, eh? Would one of these friends be a man called Ran?"

"And what if he is?" The owner snorted. "You wanna mess with him? You're out your mind, lady."

The police captain tried to suppress a smile as the conversation shifted perfectly to suit her. "Oh? Why's that? What's he going to do to us?"

"I have no idea," the owner said with a grin, "but whatever it is, you won't be heard from ever again. NOBODY messes with Ran and survives. Police, Yakuza, agents, nobody. The guy might as well be a magician, because anyone he doesn't like just up and disappears."

"And you don't know where they disappear to? Or what happens to them?" Asuka turned her body and shifted herself to sit on the desk, trying to get more relaxed as the conversation shifted away from being a strict interrogation.

"I don't know, and his people won't say. But he's dangerous, and for some reason, people don't seem to know that he's dangerous."

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Really? Why not?"

The owner shrugged as best he could. "He's not real famous, for some reason. I think it's 'cause he doesn't run any major businesses, but people usually don't realize he's a big deal until their bodyguards are found in pieces in the parking lot."

"And you don't have a problem with wholesale murder going on in your premises?" Asuka deadpanned.

"There's not much I can do about it," the owner explained. "In this business, sometimes you have to cut deals with some real sketchy folk, and I'm in no hurry to get on the guy's bad side." Then his eyes narrowed. "Besides, it's not like he's done anything to me personally. Like, say, manhandling me in my own office."

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Oh, stop your whining. Now tell us-"

"Excuse me," Ranma asked suddenly, interrupting the discussion, "quick question: does this Ran person provide you with all your guards?"

The hostage of the night blinked. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

The girls also turned to stare at Ranma curiously, thinking the same thing.

Ranma pointed at the "unconscious" man on the floor at his feet. "Every guard we've run into so far has been a vampire, including the bouncer at the front."

The owner raised an eyebrow. "They're what?"

Before anyone could answer his question, the man at Ranma's feet suddenly lashed out to grab Ranma's leg, barely missing as the pigtailed cop hopped back out of reach.

Both guards promptly leapt to their feet, realizing that they'd lost their chance to ambush the intruders as well as the secret of their species.

Much to the vampires' confusion, no one but their employer seemed at all worried about their sudden recovery. Most of the girls just looked upset, while the blue-haired woman seemed almost bored.

Asuka snapped her fingers and then pointed sharply at Ranma so that she wouldn't have to use his name. "Kill them. Quietly."

Ranma nodded, his expression the picture of neutral disinterest. Both midians hesitated at the calm exchange, each having a sinking feeling that they had lost all control of the situation.

Minako frowned at the gaping club owner, staring at him critically. "So, is this guy human, at least?"

"Yeah, he is," Usagi confirmed, having checked with her scanners already.

"What? What are you talking about?" the man asked nervously. "What's going on? Of course I'm human. What else would I be?"

_Splurk!_ One of the guards' heads tumbled onto the floor, and a moment later the body teetered over and fell against the wall, collapsing into dust against a fan of splattered blood.

Asuka shook her head at the owner's sudden distress. "If you don't even know that much, I doubt you have any information that would help us. We're here to find answers, not give them." She glanced at Usagi. "Do it."

_Click!_ Usagi's wrist popped open to reveal a pair of metal prongs, and a ribbon of electricity flared between them briefly before the cyborg jammed the taser into the owner's back.

_GZAKK!_ "GYEEAGH!" _Thud!_

"Hurk!" _Thud!_ Ranma took out a rag from his pocket and started cleaning the blood off of his weapon as the second body began to disintegrate. "Guards're dead."

"Excellent, now we just need to-"

Asuka's orders were interrupted as Ami suddenly stood up, holding several papers from the files she had been searching through the entire time. "Found it! I think we've got a target!"

"Really? What is that?" Minako asked, rushing over behind the genius Senshi.

"Just a few bill receipts for some catering and entertainment services, signed for by Ran, no apparent surname." She winked. "Complete with address. Pretty important if you're going to send people there, obviously. Looks like he has a penthouse uptown."

"Fantastic," Asuka said, smirking. 'Wow, it's been a while since I've said that without sarcasm.' "Okay, we've got a location, but I'd prefer more. Ami, see if you can crack this guy's computer and check the employment records. I'd like to know how many of Ran's thugs he's contracting out, so as to have a better idea of how many he has available for guard duty elsewhere. Also check the supply channels. An establishment like this may be useful for routing supplies for the vampire factory clubs."

Ami nodded and brought out the Mercury computer, walking over to the owner's desk.

"Aino-san, check the other rooms back here for anything useful, and be ready to go Senshi or whatever in case we need backup. The rest of you are with me."

Makoto frowned as she stepped gingerly around the puddles of blood slowly seeping into the carpet. "We're still going to search for this Ran guy now that we know where he lives? What if he's not even here?"

"He's here," Ranma said suddenly, his voice sounding strangely bereft of its normal casual cockiness. "Or at least, I hope it's him I'm sensing. I'd hate to think that there's an even stronger vampire out there somewhere."

Asuka's expression turned grim. "Let's go. And remember..." she turned back toward the others going with her. "DO try to be civil, won't you? Sure, he's a murdering, demonic scumbag, but this is still too classy a joint to go in there with guns blazing, okay?"

"I'm glad we didn't take Snake with us," Ranma murmured. Makoto and Usagi nodded solemnly.

The section of the club that catered to guests was separated into two main sections: a lounge with many open tables, a large dance floor, and wild music playing on the bottom floor, and a dimly lit series of small secluded booths on the second floor. Both areas featured huge glass statues among fountains and artificial waterfalls, and had waitresses in scandalously short-skirted outfits taking orders and flirting with the men that hadn't come with any company.

The first floor catered to individuals that had come to have fun and socialize, and Asuka and Usagi quickly started circling the tables, searching for their prey while occasionally brushing off men that invited them to their tables.

Makoto, naturally, had latched onto Ranma and dragged him upstairs as fast as she could; that section of the club catered to couples who wanted a little more seclusion so they could talk and fondle each other in private.

"Man, this really is a nice place," Ranma said, a bit awed by the environment. He had seen a few mansions in his time, but they had all been old, rickety tributes to fortunes that had mostly collapsed; nothing the Kunos had ever built compared to this.

"Hey, can you tell where that vampire guy is?" Makoto whispered, frowning at the numerous curtains that kept people from peeking into the booths.

Ranma concentrated for a moment, then shrugged. "Not really, no... When you have an aura like this guy, the power just kind of... floats around, I guess. I know he's close, but not exactly where."

"Oh. How unfortunate," Makoto said disingenuously. "I guess we'll just have to take a booth ourselves and wait to hear from Usagi-chan, then."

"What?" Ranma mumbled as he found himself suddenly dragged inside and seated on one of the plush booth seats.

Dense as he was sometimes, Ranma caught wind of Makoto's intentions immediately when she sat down right next to him, practically in his lap, when there was an empty seat on the opposite side of their table.

"L-Listen, Makoto-san-" Ranma began.

"Call me Mako-chan," Makoto corrected him, speaking in a perfectly sultry voice.

"Right... uh... Mako-chan. Listen, now really isn't the time for this, you know?" Ranma offered, tugging his pigtail nervously in a gesture that Makoto found absolutely adorable.

"Oh, okay. When would be a good time? If we search for five minutes and don't find anything, can we come back?"

Ranma sweatdropped. "That's not what I... er..." He cleared his throat for a moment, and then looked away. "Look, I can tell you like me, and I guess it's nice and all, but..."

Makoto raised an eyebrow. "But what?"

"But I'm not really looking for romance in my life right now, okay? And, well... I'd feel a lot more comfortable if you weren't hanging off of me or anything." Ranma admitted fully, sighing.

Makoto's head jerked back, as if the idea repulsed her. "Not... looking for... romance? What?" To Makoto, love (or at least the satisfaction of shallow lust) was one of a person's top five basic needs, right after food and water, and barely beating out sleep. The idea that someone would NOT want romance or sex when it was practically handed to them was utterly bizarre to her. "Are you getting over a breakup or something?"

"No, nothing like that," Ranma said, shifting slightly as Makoto gave him some more space on the seat. "It's just not important to me. In fact, having a girlfriend could be kind of annoying right now; I have a really dangerous job, and it takes a lot of time and concentration. I can't be dealing with all the dating and fighting and drama."

Makoto mulled that over for a moment. While certainly strange, from her perspective at least, Ranma did have a point. "So what? It's not like we have to see each other all the time. It could be a more casual thing, you know?"

Ranma grimaced. "No good. If I get close to a girl, she's just going to get kidnapped, and then I'll have to go rescue her. I have enough to deal with, what with all the terrorists and vampires and stuff."

Makoto raised an eyebrow. "Ranma-kun, that's ridiculous. I'm not going to get kidna-"

Before the ponytailed girl could even finish that sentence, a hand suddenly darted in through the curtain shielding the booth, grabbed Makoto around the bicep, and then yanked her out of her seat onto the lounge floor, eliciting a breathless squeak from the surprised Senshi.

Ranma's eye twitched. "It starts..."

Sliding reluctantly out of his seat, Ranma exited the booth and promptly found the villain who had captured his not-quite-involved-but-definitely-interested-acquaintance. It was one of the waitresses, a rather small and wiry-looking woman, but she had a firm hold on Makoto and firmly registered as a vampire to his senses.

"Seriously now, what do you think you're doing?" Ranma asked dangerously, keeping his voice low enough so that the club's patrons wouldn't be able to hear. "Do you really think you can kill her faster than I can kill you? Lose the girl or lose the arm."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down there, kiddo," the vampiress said, smirking. "I'm not here to hurt anyone. Let's not do anything rash."

"It's a little late for that," Makoto said acidly. "Grabbing me like that? Pretty rash."

"Listen up: Lord Ran knows you're here, and wishes to speak with you," the waitress said, snickering. "So whether you leave this place alive tonight is between you and him, no matter what happens to me."

Makoto looked over her shoulder at the vampiress nervously, and then glanced toward Ranma.

Ranma hesitated for a moment, and then visibly relaxed. "Well, if that's the case, you shoulda just said so. We'll go with you. Just let her go, alright?"

"As long as you don't try to run," the waitress said, shoving Makoto away. "It's useless anyhow."

Ranma quickly caught Makoto as the brunette nearly stumbled over, and the both of them glared harshly at the waitress as she turned around.

"Are we really going?" Makoto whispered as she stood up on her own.

"Well, she's willing to show us what we came here for, so I guess it's the best we can do," Ranma reasoned. "It's hardly an ambush, but I need to see this guy face-to-face."

Makoto nodded timidly as Ranma followed the undead waitress, glancing around at the few patrons who were paying attention to the minor scuffle. 'I hope Usagi and Asuka find their way up here; I have a feeling we're going to need them!'

* * *

Asuka was, at the moment, thoroughly occupied with some hefty mental calculations, and totally unaware that Ranma and Makoto had more or less located their objective.

Specifically, she was weighing Snake's psychotic tendencies and Kyle's stupidity against a newfound flaw of Usagi's: her appetite.

Half the patrons on the first floor were now staring in wonder and horror as the blonde decimated the buffet table, cleaning serving trays one after another and then emptying the food into her mouth right there at the buffet line.

'On the one hand, Snake would have definitely burnt or exploded something by now. On the OTHER hand, he would have probably completed a mission objective at the same time. Now Kyle would have definitely blown our cover by now, but he would do it in such a ridiculously moronic way that we could easily pass it off as a joke. Hmmm...'

"_Chomp!_ Asuka-chan! _Gulp!_ You HAVE to try the priscoo... the priscottage... the pros... this ham-like stuff! It's great!" Usagi cheered, her smile nearly splitting open her face.

"And how would I DO that, considering you just stuffed the last of it down your throat?" Asuka growled quietly. "And call me Captain, damn it!"

Usagi blinked, then gave an embarrassed shrug before shifting over to the next plate.

"Tsukino, I'm serious!" The police captain hissed. "You're attracting way too much attention! Did you forget everything I said about discretion?"

The ponytailed cyborg winced. "But it's not like I'm doing anything out of the ordinary..."

"What are you, kidding me? Is your mouth an **actual** garbage disposal? I've never even seen Saotome or Tekai eat like that!" Asuka moved closer and took hold of Usagi's arm, pulling her away from the food. "Aren't you mostly robot, anyway? How come you need to eat so much?"

Usagi lowered her head and pushed her index fingers together awkwardly. "I'm not really sure... Ami-chan said it had to do with my... uh... bio-spasmic reactors, or... or something like that."

"Oh, whatever," Asuka mumbled, sighing. "Just stop eating for now and help me search, okay? You're the one with the scanners."

"Pardon me."

Asuka glanced behind her at the request, and quickly looked over the woman who had asked for her attention. She was relatively tall, with long, platinum-colored hair, and a face that was mature yet free of any indication of age. She was wearing a silvery, shining evening gown that just barely contrasted to her hair, and a large silk mantle was wrapped around her neck.

Asuka frowned as she finished her assessment, and then glanced at Usagi.

Usagi had frozen absolutely stiff, and her hair was sticking straight out like bundles of iron rods (which they might have been, for all Asuka knew).

Asuka turned back toward the woman. "I take it my friend here knows you?"

Kimiko smiled gently. "Yes, we've met. Under rather trying circumstances, might I add. My name is Kimiko."

"No surname?" Asuka asked.

"No surname," Kimiko replied, her expression remaining utterly calm and unassuming.

Asuka crossed her arms under her breasts. "I see. And what can we do for you, a nosferatu?"

The elder vampiress didn't flinch in the slightest. "I want you to come with me. My master wishes to speak with you."

"Your master wouldn't happen to be some jerk named Ran, would he?" Asuka asked directly.

Kimiko nodded slightly. "Yes. I see you were expecting him. He would be most pleased if he could speak to you in person, before engaging in any pointless battles."

Asuka frowned, rubbing her chin. "Well... I really did want to get the pointless battle over with first, and **then** speak to him, preferably as his body was slowly withering away into dust on the ground..." She sighed and then shrugged. "But what the hey, since he invited us..."

Kimiko sweatdropped. "R-Right... if you'll follow me..."

As the vampiress turned around, Asuka poked Usagi in the side. "Hey. Hey, snap out of it. We're going."

A brief puff of steam came out of Usagi's ears, and she shook her head desperately. "A-Asuka-chan! That woman! She's a really strong vampire!"

Asuka nodded as she took Usagi's hand and led her on. "Yeah, I figured. And call me Captain."

"We're not really going to follow her, are we?" The cyborg asked fearfully. Out in the streets, in combat mode, and when she had people to protect, Usagi could easily muster the courage to fight the powerful midian, even while wounded. But in this environment, even she could tell that the vampiress had all the tactical advantages. The only thing stopping Kimiko from butchering them both was her cover as a human, and Usagi really had no idea how important that facade was.

"It'll lead us to Ran," Asuka said simply. "After that, we play it by ear, but right now we're completely within mission parameters."

"So... what should we do when we meet Ran?" Usagi whispered, apparently under the illusion that Kimiko couldn't hear them.

"Ideally? Elimination," Asuka said simply, her expression hardening. "But realistically? I'm hoping for survival."

Kimiko chuckled softly as she started up the stairs, the two DAPC officers following a few meters behind. "I must warn you: nobody has ever engaged Lord Ran in battle and survived."

"Then it's only fair to warn you," Asuka shot back, "there are two or three people who've engaged us in battle and survived, but we're working on that."

"Oh, I know," Kimiko remarked as she reached the top of the stairs. "Unless I'm mistaken, I'm one of them."

"Yeah, you are," Asuka said bluntly as she crested the stairs, Usagi following behind timidly. "Maybe we can resolve that a little later, after we have a chat with your boss?"

Kimiko made a face. "I would prefer not. I am not like so many of the others. I don't like to kill outside of feeding. It's cruel and wasteful."

"That's SO close to being respectable," Asuka mumbled sourly. "Which booth?"

The elder vampiress stepped forward silently and drew back the privacy curtain to one of the large booths near the stairs, gesturing for Asuka and Usagi to sit down inside.

Asuka immediately raised her eyebrow at seeing Ranma and Makoto already seated on one side of the booth. Ranma's expression was unusually serious, while Makoto seemed almost as nervous as Usagi was.

"Good to see you guys made it here," Asuka said, sliding in next to the brunette. Usagi hesitated only a moment before sitting down herself at the end.

Across from them was what appeared to be a young man in a black suede jacket. He had crystalline blue eyes, and flawless skin with a creamy alabaster complexion, but other than his remarkably attractive features, seemed almost painfully... ordinary. He wasn't even of average height, being perhaps an inch or two shorter than Ranma.

"Lord Ran, I presume?" Asuka said, feeling a little disappointed despite herself. She was expecting something a bit more... unique from the master of all vampires throughout Japan.

"In the flesh," Ran said simply as Kimiko slid into position next to him. "It's an honor to finally meet you, Miss..."

"I am Captain Asuka Takami of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment," Asuka said firmly. "If it's all the same to you, I won't have my subordinates name themselves. I'm sure you understand."

Ran nodded simply, though Kimiko felt a pang of distress as she stared at Ranma from across the table. Ran's goals aside, she dearly wanted to learn more about her new favorite food supply, and had thought that this would be the perfect opportunity.

"That's fine. Are you the commanding officer, or should I bring the two of you rummaging through the offices here too?" Ran asked, smirking.

If he was hoping to see Asuka squirm, he was disappointed. "I'm the commanding officer. Leave those two alone; they're busy."

Ran leaned forward and steepled his fingers as the booth's curtain shifted again, and the midian waitress from before set down a pot of tea and some cups. "Excellent. Straight to business, then."

Asuka interrupted the man before he could introduce the next topic, pouring herself some of the tea at the same time. "Before we get to the most important matters at hand, there's a small... peripheral issue I'd like to discuss. We currently have a vampire by the name of Garo imprisoned, and his upkeep has become a nuisance to me. I was wondering if you'd like to negotiate his release."

The other humans/cyborg in the booth turned toward Asuka, surprised, while Ran simply looked confused.

"Garo? Never heard of him. And what do you mean, 'negotiate his release'?"

Asuka took a sip of her tea before responding. "You must realize by now that your actions and objectives essentially amount to an open declaration of war against the human race. At this point, not just the safety of the populace, but the national security of Japan is threatened by the onslaught of feeding vampires, to say nothing of your direct assaults on a police station." She started pouring the others on her side of the table some tea. "As this is a war we're involved in, I'd be remiss not to offer rights of parley, such as prisoner exchanges."

Asuka then lifted up the kettle. "Care for some? It's very good."

Ran raised an eyebrow. "I never drink... tea."

"Right, right." Asuka suddenly took Ranma's hand and pulled his arm out onto the table. "Would you care for a bite of our close-combat expert, then? From what I can tell, he's quite the hit with you parasites."

"Wh-What?" Ranma asked, suddenly nervous. He didn't think Asuka would offer his blood as a snack just to break the ice, but he'd never have expected her to offer the release of a vampire back to the enemy, either.

Kimiko immediately leaned forward, her face flushed. "Actually, if you don't mind, I'd love some-"

"I was just kidding," Asuka deadpanned, letting Ranma go.

Ran snickered softly as Kimiko pouted. "My, my... saying you have nerves of steel doesn't give you enough credit, my dear. I can see what makes you so formidable." He sat back into his seat. "Unfortunately, I don't have anything I'd be willing to give you in exchange for this... 'Garo'. And if I did, I still doubt I'd bother. He is but one of many fools who've managed to stumble in your way and weren't strong enough to survive, and my race is better off without such weaklings."

"So, what, everyone who can't take us on is expendable to you?" Ranma asked irritably.

Ran glanced over at Kimiko meaningfully. "No. Not everyone." He shook his head. "Regardless, I'd rather move on. You may keep your... prisoner."

Asuka shrugged and drank more of her tea. 'Rather short-sighted of him. Not to mention cruel. Where does he think we got the name and location of this club? Does he not realize what kind of strategic asset we have, or does he just think it won't matter in the long run?'

"Your department has taken quite a toll on my people," Ran said, leaning forward again. "Naturally, this angered me greatly at first, to the point that I ordered an assault on your base. An attack that was ill-planned and ultimately futile, it would seem." He sighed. "However, as you say, we are at war now. Perhaps I had simply been avoiding that reality, thinking of humans still as ignorant, unwary cattle, but now it's quite obvious that the time has come for battle, not merely hunting. My people will fight, not for food, but for supremacy. And you humans will fight back, not simply out of self-defense, but to maintain your pitiful civilization."

"Yeah, well, okay then! Glad we got that out in the open! Can we go now?" Usagi said, becoming more nervous by the minute. The fact that Asuka and Ranma seemed perfectly calm was little comfort to her. She'd seen Kimiko fight, and knew that if the vampiress wanted to, she could easily slaughter Asuka and Makoto before she or Ranma could stop her; the fact that she was sitting next to an even more powerful vampire gave her chills, to say nothing of the warnings her battle computer kept bringing up.

"Take it easy, we're not done here yet," Asuka reassured the blonde. Then she turned back to Ran. "There's one thing I don't get, Ran-san, that I'd like you to answer if you'd be willing: just why are you starting this war?"

Ran looked rather surprised by the question. "Why? Really? Isn't it obvious?"

"No, it's really not," Asuka muttered, scratching her head. "I mean, let's be honest here. You guys didn't have it so bad before. You managed to get your food by feeding off the underbelly of civilization and killing the people who wouldn't be missed. As much as it disgusts me to admit it, this was probably even beneficial to humanity, and you didn't have any police gunning for you, because we didn't even know you existed. So you got fed, you lived the good life in places like this, and again, though it's still despicable and wrong, nobody cared. What's the deal? Why are you so desperate for a bigger slice of the pie that you're willing to put your entire race at stake?"

Then her eyes narrowed. "Because that **is** what's at stake here. I can assure you, now that we know about your kind, we will ensure that every last one of you is hunted down and crushed."

Ran smiled slightly. "No doubt... Well, I wasn't planning on telling you this, but why not?" Kimiko straightened and noticeably paid much closer attention as Ran started speaking again.

"To be honest, I didn't always have such ambitions. I have women, money, power, and believe me, I have no trouble getting a snack whenever I feel like it." Then he looked up at the ceiling, looking almost fond. "I was... too content, looking back. I hardly even noticed the greater condition of our species, constantly living in fear of human discovery."

The vampire lord shook his head. "And then... came a man. A strange, marvelous man, who claimed to have divine knowledge of the future."

Ranma sweatdropped. "Eh? You're kidding, right? You mean you started this because some fortune teller told you to?"

"He is no mere fortune teller, my friend," Ran said, grinning. "This man was a genuine oracle. Three times, he was able to predict the exact time and date of great calamities to this city. The incursion of steel, the light that split the sky, and the great meteor."

Asuka sweatdropped. 'That would probably be... Igov's first major assault, the ion cannon satellite, and the alien ship crashing into the forest. Still, there's got to be something to it...'

"And he foretold one last disaster to befall the human race," Ran intoned menacingly, "the final eclipse of the light, and the great incursion of the children of darkness into your world."

"I'm guessing that translates to: 'Vampires win'," Ranma mumbled.

"Yes, it does. With my destiny laid out before me like a roadmap, how could I not start down this path? With victory predetermined, how could I fail to grasp the opportunity of a thousand human lifetimes?"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "But you didn't count on us, did you?"

"The prophet does not see all," Ran explained, "but what he does see is certain to come to pass. There will be many conflicts. There may even be defeats. But our ascendance is assured."

Makoto snorted, glancing at Usagi. "I don't know about that. Destiny isn't what it used to be these days."

Ran chose to ignore the strange comment, assuming that the brunette was simply rationalizing her resistance to the inevitable. "Now, then. This brings us back to you. The DAPC."

He started tapping his fingers together as he spoke. "You have destroyed one of our 'reproduction centers,' killed countless of our brethren, and successfully destroyed some of my most powerful nosferatu. You are obviously the greatest current threat to the midians in Tokyo, if not in all of the world."

Makoto pouted slightly that the Sailor Senshi hadn't even warranted a mention, though she couldn't really complain; the Senshi's record for fighting vampires was limited to chasing off Kimiko before she could butcher Usagi.

"Your men and women are... unique. Strong, experienced, dynamic, and resilient," Ran admitted grudgingly.

Asuka smirked. "Yeah. If they were competent too, just think of everything we could accomplish!"

Usagi and Ranma winced, but let Ran continue.

"I can only imagine that our losses at your hands will be grievous indeed if you're not taken care of immediately... one way or another."

Asuka's eyebrows climbed. "I have to admit, I was completely expecting barely-veiled threats, but what's this 'or another' thing?"

"Our conflict need not be resolved through violence," Ran said pleasantly, his countenance brightening considerably. "As you yourself expressed an interest in negotiation, I would like to provide you with other options."

Ranma blanched. "You're kidding, right? You want to turn all of humanity into a big cattle farm, and you're telling us, the officially licensed ghoul hunters, that it doesn't have to end in violence?"

"Humanity isn't all it's cracked up to be, don't you think?" The vampire lord asked, gesturing toward Asuka amiably. "I'd like to offer you the chance to... switch teams."

Asuka blinked while the others outright recoiled. "You want us to work for you? Humans taking orders from our predators?"

"No, no, not at all," Ran explained, waving his hand negligently. "I want to turn you all into vampires."

The others blanched again, and Asuka made a face.

"Think of it," the vampire lord continued, "immortality, invulnerability, power transcendent! With your skills combined with the vampire's might, you would become my new elite circle; everything your heart desires would be yours! Material wealth, power, companionship, health, longevity-"

"All at the low, low price of our very humanity, eh?" Asuka asked tiredly, planting an elbow on the table and resting her cheek against her fist. "Problem: I seem to remember an idiotic and completely arbitrary requirement for becoming a vampire... something about... sexual purity, was it? Is that going to be an issue?"

Makoto blushed and rubbed the side of her head. "Heh heh... what can I say? I've been playing the field."

Usagi gulped nervously and remained quiet, well aware that she still qualified as virgin material... even if her "other condition" might have made turning impossible.

"Normally, yes, it would be," Ran explained, interlacing his fingers. "However, there are other ways to be turned besides simply being bitten. Rituals that can be performed... in this way we can not only turn an... indiscrete human, but we can also make the newly turned far more powerful than a new vampire would otherwise be. I can guarantee you this special treatment."

Usagi grit her teeth fiercely, but was unable to stop the torrent of emotion caused by Ran's offer. "You're... You're **disgusting**!"

Ran blinked, surprised. "Pardon?" "What you do to people... I've seen it!" The cyborg spat. "Ordinary, good people who had normal lives, just going to work and school, suddenly hiding in shadows and killing people! You think you can get away with this? You think you can offer it to people as... as some sort of **privilege**?"

Ran frowned. "Our turned hardly seem to mind... in most cases, anyway."

"That's the worst thing about it!" Usagi cried, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "When you turn people, they... they LOSE something! How could so many people who've probably never even thought of killing another human get used to murdering so easily? How could they turn on their friends and families?" She shook her head fiercely. "No. Never. I won't let you turn a single person more if I can help it! Even if I have to destroy you right here!"

Kimiko winced as Ran's face hardened. "I advise you take a more polite tone with-"

His reprimand was interrupted by some sudden, light clapping coming from Asuka. "Thank you, that was very well put, actually." She glared at Ran. "Normally I'm pretty careful about making decisions for other people, but in this case I think I speak for my entire department and our associates when I say: What she said."

Before the vampire lord could say anything, she continued. "I declare these negotiations over. We have a war to get back to. Would you like to start here, or take it outside?"

Ran looked decidedly displeased as his eyes flashed at the police captain. "As anyone who knows me can tell you, I can be **quite** impatient. Let's begin, shall we?"

At the declaration, Ranma and Usagi both tensed, ready to grab their more helpless companions and get to a more open area where they wouldn't be at such a disadvantage.

Asuka's reaction, however, was instantaneous. She reached below the table, pulled out her gun from her thigh holster, and calmly switched the safety off.

And then she pressed the barrel up into the bottom of her own chin and pressed the trigger.

_Click!_

Makoto and Usagi froze in abject horror at the seemingly random and sudden act of suicide, and it took each a few seconds to realize that the gun hadn't actually discharged.

Ranma sweatdropped as he leaned over Makoto's lap, holding the gun hammer in place and preventing the gun from firing. "Hey, Captain? Yo, snap out of it!"

Asuka blinked in surprise, and then jerked her weapon away from her throat, as if just realizing it was there. "Huh. Not a bad opening move," she admitted, her voice far too firm for someone who had nearly blown her own head off. "I wasn't expecting something so... subtle."

Ran frowned deeply, but made no further moves.

"Unfortunately, as a department, we don't really do 'subtle'," Asuka admitted, holstering her gun once more. "We'll continue this somewhere where we can cause a bit more ruckus without disturbing people's evenings. We **are** protectors of the peace, after all."

Usagi exited the booth stiffly, and Asuka was practically shoved out in Makoto's haste to get up.

Ranma left more slowly, observing Ran closely as he slid toward the booth entrance for any sign that the vampire lord might try something on their way out; it didn't escape Ranma's reasoning that the elder vampires were probably giving up the best chance they'd ever get to kill off the DAPC's leader and most powerful members. And while he was really glad he didn't have to fight the midians under these circumstances, he had to wonder why they'd give up such an opportunity.

Kimiko's thoughts mirrored Ranma's, though she spent the humans' departure staring longingly at the pigtailed man's back.

"Lord Ran, why did you do that?" She asked as soon as the humans were out of earshot. "I could understand if you ignored them completely, or attacked without restraint, but why make one attempt on the leader's life and then let them go?"

"I was just... remembering something," Ran said quietly, obviously disturbed. "The hypnosis was... impulsive of me. I had been warned against such actions, and I erred." The prophet's words echoed in his mind. 'Is it possible? Was I really so close to destruction, without even realizing it? Despite all my power, the prophet has always been right before. And these... humans are definitely not ones to be taken lightly.'

"Excuse me? Master, Mistress?"

Both nosferatu turned toward the waitress from before, who was looking paler than even a vampire had any right to be. "Yes? Whatever you have to say, be quick about it," Ran snapped.

The girl winced. "Ah, yes. I j-just received word, my lord. The Shadow Games club near the bay... it's been... it's been completely leveled, Master."

Ran clenched his teeth. "I see. Do we know who is responsible?"

"Uh, well, the rumor going around is that it was those mechanical... things. I haven't heard anything to confirm it, but apparently the club was suddenly shelled with artillery while it was still open and full of guests."

"Yes, that doesn't really sound like government protocol," Kimiko said wryly. "So that leaves but two of our little vampire nurseries remaining."

"Ah, right. About that," the waitress continued nervously. "I was told to inform you, Master, that two undercover officers were discovered in Fuji Deep club last night."

Kimiko slapped a hand against her forehead, knowing what the next piece of news likely was.

"B-Both officers were killed immediately before our men there really thought about what they were doing."

_Bam!_ Kimiko slammed a fist onto the table as she massaged her forehead. "Imbeciles! Nothing but thoughtless, reckless idiots drunk with power! With so many other dwellings crumbling, now they invite the government proper to destroy us?"

"Kimiko. Come with me," Ran said suddenly, floating directly through the back of the booth chair.

The waitress blanched and looked around wildly, astonished that Ran might do something so unnecessary that could blow his cover.

Kimiko was not nearly so impulsive, and simply got up and walked around the booth to meet with her master. "Lord Ran, what's wrong? Are we to do something about the investigation?"

"No. No, we will not," the vampire lord snapped, walking straight toward the wall that separated the building interior from the rear parking lot, and then stepping straight through it.

Kimiko's eye twitched as she glanced around for anyone that might have been looking, and then quickly stepped through the wall after her master.

"You see, Kimiko, it would seem that the plots have unraveled," Ran explained as the two elder vampires floated high above the ground, the chilly, late evening wind battering their clothes. "Subterfuge, stealth, trickery... these are no longer tools that we can easily employ."

Kimiko frowned, not liking where that train of thought was going.

"No. Our good Captain Takami was correct. This conflict has evolved to the next stage; we are at war. No longer shall we build up our forces quietly, from behind the scenes. Soon we will march openly into the homes of the enemy. We will butcher their defenders, and turn their children!" He grinned savagely, his dagger-like fangs extending. "No more hiding. No more skulking or running. I wish to let all know and fear the power of the nosferatu!"

Kimiko's frown turned into a grimace. "Launching our campaign so soon, 'General'? In case you weren't aware, with the losses from having three of our clubs razed, our numbers lie somewhere in the realm of... oh, I don't know... four hundred vampires? Of these, very few have been in any sort of real fight, and I doubt that any save us elders are any match at all for the DAPC. We don't have an army capable of taking this city, much less Japan, much MUCH less all of human civilization. And despite the prophet's assurances, the sun still rises every morning, as far as I'm aware. How are we to combat the inevitable daytime incursions?"

"You needn't worry about that... yet." Ran said, his expression inexplicably brightening. "For in these dark times, there is a single candle, a single spark of hope." His expression turned fierce. "We need but grasp it, and that spark will grow. Grow into a conflagration that will consume our enemies."

Kimiko snorted. "Normally such 'light in the darkness' lines are reserved to bring hope to our enemies, not damned children such as us."

"Enough. Quiet yourself," Ran demanded as a stretch limo slowly pulled up next to the club, directly below the pair. "Our ride is here. Let's go home. I expect to have a pleasant treat awaiting for me when I return."

* * *

_BWAKOOM!_

Meanwhile, several miles away, Ran's "pleasant treat" walked calmly through a blazing, crumbling hole in the wall of the Nikogai Central Mall, heedless of the burning debris that littered the ground around her as she dragged a single horrified college-age vampiress out of the smoke and ash of the building interior and into the cool night air.

_Crack! Fwoom!_ The ceiling of the mall structure started to collapse as the flames spread unchallenged, licking at the supports and dropping chunks of wood, glass, and concrete down into the piles of ashen dust below.

"_Hack! Cough!_ You... You psychotic witch..." a young man who had probably looked rather handsome before having half his face melted off gasped while shifting slightly on the ground, his legs having been reduced to so many cinders. "You won't... get away with this... You can't-"

_Whud!_ He was silenced by a sharp heel to the face, and the formerly human creature rolled away limply into the plaza outside the mall.

Sailor Mars snorted as she stood in front of the blaze of the mall, her hair floating on cold winds carrying precious oxygen into the flames. "I know you monsters are out there," she snapped, glaring at the trees that the mall's owners had planted in the plaza. "Not coming out? Fine." She lifted Tsuna into the air with one hand, eliciting a whimper from the undead girl. With the other, she pointed at the wounded vampire on the ground and snapped her fingers. "Fire soul."

_THWOOM! THWOOM! THWOOM!_ The injured midian was consumed instantly, and the explosions provoked several more screams as some of the fireballs flew further and detonated among the trees and benches in the plaza.

"Die, pyro bitch!" One vampire snarled as he leapt out from among the flames to land atop a lamp post.

"N-No! Wait! Kazui!" Another one yelled, landing on the roof behind her. "We have to take her alive, man! Stop!"

"Shut up! I don't even care anymore!" The vampire apparently named Kazui swore as he dove down at the Senshi of Mars. The other vampire immediately followed, intent on preventing his friend from making a critical mistake.

Sailor Mars scoffed and flicked her wrist, summoning a pair of Shinto talismans before loosing them into the air.

"Bwuh?" The first vampire barely had time to realize that a slip of paper had struck him in the face before mind-boggling agony assaulted his senses, dropping him out of the air like a stone. His companion joined him on the ground opposite their target a moment later, screeching as he clawed at the ward on his face.

"Pathetic. And here you freaks almost had me worried enough to call in my friends for help," Mars mumbled, pointing to midian that had insulted her. "Mars fire ignite."

_FWOOSH!_ "AGYAAAAH!!"

Ignoring the vampire's dying screams, Mars turned around toward the next one. "Ditto."

_FWOOSH!_ "WAAARGH!!"

Tsuna gulped nervously as she watched her fellow undead disintegrate into charred skeletons, and then rapidly break down further into dust and ash amidst the flames. "What... What are you going to do with me?"

Mars glanced at her prisoner suddenly, as if just remembering she was there. "Oh, you? I'm going to turn you in to the proper authorities."

Tsuna's mind boggled. "What? The proper authorities? Who-"

"Now think about that for a moment," Mars said mercilessly, keeping one eye out for any more vampires, "what would be the proper agency to deal with a captured vampire, hmmm?"

Tsuna's face couldn't really get any paler at that moment, but the look on her face made it clear that she would have rather been incinerated then and there. "The DAPC? But why?"

"Well, besides the fact that I appreciate irony... hold on." She thrust out her palm toward a few shapes dashing by amongst the few bushes that weren't already on fire. "Fire soul!"

_THWOOM! FOOM! BOOM!_

"Where was I?" Mars asked, bringing her attention back to her prisoner, "Oh, right. When you get right down to it, I really don't feel like dealing with you myself, Nagase. I feel betrayed, sure, and you don't seem to have much regret for what you've become or what you've done, but I don't think I can blame you completely for this, so I'm not going to simply wipe you out."

"So instead you're going to hand me over to those psychotic murderers?" Tsuna demanded, finally starting to struggle within Mars' grip.

"As opposed to leaving you with **these** psychotic murderers?" Mars asked, gesturing to the burning piles of dust on the ground. "Yes. At least our murderers have some sort of obligation to the cause of justice. I can't promise you'll be treated fairly, or even humanely, but I can keep them from killing you."

"N-No! Stop! Please! Put me down!" Tsuna shouted, squirming within the Senshi's grasp, but unwilling to actually strike the woman (she wasn't so panicked yet that she realized that fighting back could only make her situation worse).

"Quiet down or I'll hit you with another talisman," Mars snapped, pointing further into the plaza as she started moving. "Burning mandala!"

Rings of fire blazed a path through the scattered brushfires, and Mars heard several more yelps of pain as shadowy figures quickly retreated further from the area. 'I can sense... three more? Maybe four? Could be more on the way. Have to get moving.'

"Hino-san, I'm begging you!" Tsuna said as she was hauled along, tears leaking freely from her eyes. "I don't like this existence! I didn't want to be this way! But now I am and soon you will be too! Fighting it will only make it more painful for everybody!"

"And that's the way it should be," Mars growled, glancing left and right as the light of the fires danced on concrete walls and iron statues. "If your humanity is at stake, then it's only right you spend every last second fighting for it." Then she glared back at her captive. "Did you?"

When Tsuna did nothing but stutter in response, the Senshi of fire snorted and continued toward the road, hearing the sound of fire engines in the distance. "Well, the cavalry has arrived, but I doubt that the DA would be called out to investigate a random fire, so we still have a bit of a walk on our hands."

She frowned, and then flicked her wrist, summoning her communicator. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to bring the others into this and have to explain you, but I suppose it would be best to be cautious. I don't know how many more freaks are still ou-"

_Shooft!_

Mars blinked rapidly as her communicator vanished right before her eyes, as if it had sunk right into her palm. "What? What in the... how?" She glanced at her palm, and then turned over her hand in wonder before looking around on the ground beneath her. "Where did... it just..."

Tsuna winced as she watched the scene unfold. "Oh no... I was hoping it wasn't going to come to this."

"We all were, my dear," said a new, distinctly male voice with a touch of a German accent.

Sailor Mars whirled about at the noise, and her hackles rose as she sighted a man standing above her, seemingly on top of thin air.

The fellow certainly would have seemed impressive, floating in the air and holding her communicator with one hand in his pocket... were it not for the fact that his entire body was cracked and charred, with great seams of cauterized flesh running all over his face and hands. His clothes looked fine, but Mars was quite certain the floating midian was in a great deal of pain.

"Sheesh, what happened to you? Did I already hit you by accident or something?" Mars asked, making a face.

Kliff's scorched eyebrow twitched in irritation. "No... some punks were giving me a hard time earlier. But it doesn't matter now." His eyes narrowed. "I see that everyone else failed to catch you off-guard. How annoying. You humans really aren't even worth the trouble."

"If that's how you feel, why don't you give me back my communicator and scurry on home?" Mars said, waving off the German man. "Normally I'd take the time to immolate you, but I've only got one hand free, and you look like a fast one to me," she reasoned.

"I'd love to, I assure you," Kliff mumbled, tossing the communicator up into the air and catching it on its way down, "I also wouldn't mind twisting that pretty little head right off your shoulders and then taking a quick sip from the drinking fountain that results. Unfortunately, neither option is available to me. I have orders to take you back, alive, and as 'unharmed as possible'."

"Wow," Mars mumbled, pointing a finger at the elder nosferatu, "that sucks for you, doesn't it? Fire soul."

A stream of fireballs blasted upward toward the floating vampire, who snorted contemptuously and held out his palm.

Sailor Mars growled as she watched her projectiles vanish right before hitting their target, only to reappear behind him and continue onward, scattering into the cold, empty night air and dissipating into sizzling sparks before floating down the streets.

"It took the last batch of idiots almost a full five minutes before they learned not to shoot at me. I do hope you're a bit quicker on the uptake," Kliff said. Naturally, he left unsaid that those same idiots had blown him to pieces and sent him into a panicked retreat. Just a fluke, he was sure.

Mars grit her teeth as her mind raced. 'Okay, so this guy's a little different from the others. Shooting him from the front won't work, and help isn't coming. I guess running is all that's left, then.'

Suddenly pulling Tsuna closer, she hugged the vampiress against her front and then hooked one arm under her chin, using her confused former friend as an (in)human shield. "You want me? I'm not going to make it easy for you! Fire soul!"

Kliff bared his fangs in anger as he redirected another stream of flames harmlessly into the air, only to see his target suddenly dash away, through the streets.

"The insolence of the humans nearly eclipses the incompetence of my young brethren," the elder vampire snarled, opening up a portal for his own transportation. "Nearly."

"Ack! Ow! H-Hino-san, you're s-strangling me!" Tsuna complained as Sailor Mars dashed along, carrying the girl around the neck.

Mars raised an eyebrow as she turned a corner, moving away from the firefighters and police that had arrived at the mall. "So what? You're already dead, right? Last I heard, vampires couldn't suffocate."

"It still h-hurts!"

"Deal with it!" The fiery magical girl snapped, stopping suddenly to get her bearings.

Almost immediately, she sensed something behind her, and Mars whirled around just in time for Kliff to reach out of a glowing portal, grabbing onto Tsuna's neck.

"Gotcha!" Mars shouted, flinging a talisman at the elder vampire just as he had realized he'd grabbed the wrong person.

The paper ward slapped onto Kliff's forehead, and the vampire was stunned for a moment as his undead magics struggled with the powerful spiritual energies.

After a moment, however, the ward glowed a bright green, and then burst into harmless shreds of paper.

"Tch! Burning mandala!" Mars shouted, tugging Tsuna out of Kliff's grip and launching another wave of searing plasma at the midian.

Kliff stepped backward and vanished, moving through a portal just a split second before the rings of flame could reach him, and fires briefly lit up the entire neighborhood before Mars canceled the attack, not wanting to start another blaze.

"This is annoying," the Senshi of fire growled, moving through an alley even as she tightened her grip on her hostage. "Hey, you know that guy, don't you? What's his deal? How can I take him down?"

"Wh-WHAT?! Take him down? Master Kliff?" Tsuna gasped in disbelief. "You're crazy! There's no way you can kill him!"

Mars' eyebrow twitched as she scanned the area all around her, well aware that an attack could come from any direction. "Well, is there any way I can **try**? He's obviously wounded already; I think if I could just get in one solid hit, I could drive him off."

"You're only making him mad!" Tsuna protested. "Please, surrender or he might kill us both!"

"Do as the girl says, Mars!" Kliff shouted from the roof above, and the aforementioned magical girl immediately turned to face him. "Don't think that a hostage will keep you safe. That one was merely a tool for finding you. Now that we have you, I honestly couldn't care less whether our tool breaks during your capture."

Sailor Mars was about to step backwards to continue her retreat, when she noticed the barely shimmering light in front of the elder vampire, holding place in the air in a surprisingly large pane.

'Is he just shielding himself in case I fire again? Or...'

A hesitant step back sent shivers up and down her spine as the reincarnated warrior felt her heel shift partially through time and space.

"Well? There's still time to make this easy on yourself," Kliff snapped, idly rubbing his tender face. The horrific veins of charred flesh had shrunk by now to thin, but prominent cracks, but the irritation was constant.

"I always was the stubborn one," Mars quipped, suddenly turning and shoving Tsuna into the portal behind her. Kliff could only manage a confused noise in the time it took the young vampire thrall to tumble out into him, almost knocking him over.

Mars, alleviated of her prisoner, took the opportunity to jump high up onto one of the lower roofs, immediately dashing in the direction of her school campus. 'I really did want to bring along Nagase... but I guess I have to be more careful.'

Kliff growled and shoved Tsuna away, nearly knocking her off of the roof. "Get out of my sight, you useless bag of meat! You're no use to me, and that means you're just in my way!"

Tsuna yelped and stared as the elder vampire vanished, curling up on the roof as both her enemy and ally left to continue the chase.

"Oh, Hino-san... I really am sorry... but you really can't escape..." she sniffled as she stood up, her vampiric body having already completely recovered from all the recent abuse. "Nobody can..."

* * *

"It would seem things just aren't going as planned tonight," Ran mumbled as he was updated on Kliff's progress via telepathic link. "I am beginning to wonder about the competence of my subordinates."

Kimiko rolled her eyes. "Vampires are ill-suited to being henchmen, and these tasks you give us are not simple matters. Given that the danger of our operations can only increase in the near future, a more personal hand may be required at times, don't you think?"

"It annoys me, but you're right," the vampire lord sighed, leaning back in his seat. "Unfortunately, I may have to refrain from going to the clubs after tonight, with the DAPC on my heels."

Ran glanced over at Kimiko. "As long as we're on the topic, what was that plan of yours all about? Offering them undeath? Did you actually think that would work?"

When Ran had detected the psychic link to one of his bodyguards breaking, his first instinct had been to find and slaughter the culprits, and his second was to leave immediately before the infiltrators could find him. It was Kimiko who had suggested a meeting between enemies, and that a deal should be offered.

Naturally, Ran thought the humans were idiots not to jump at the chance of joining the undead ranks, but he had fully expected them to refuse. And despite gaining some valuable insight as to his enemies by meeting some of them face-to-face, the entire exercise had been mostly a waste of time.

Kimiko shook her head. "I did not make the suggestion with the expectation that it would change anything. I simply thought the option should be offered, that the humans should make a **choice** rather than being pushed into the opposition by our offensive."

Ran gave her a look. "What difference does that make?"

"A wise man once said to me: 'humans choose their own nature,'" Kimiko said somberly. "A human can choose to be an herbivore or predator. A rebel or a conformist. A master or a servant." She snorted. "How little value we place on such a simple and basic thing as choice. How unimportant it seems in the face of immortality and the power of the unholy."

"Immortality nothing," Ran scoffed, "I swear, you sound more and more like an old woman every day."

The vampiress shrugged. "So, if you thought the meeting was going to end in refusal, why did you not kill them then and there? The attempt on the Captain's life was rather half-hearted, if not creative; had you given the order, we could have both destroyed them easily."

Ran snorted. "A wise man once told **me**: 'Lay off the DAPC until you get the flame girl. Bunch of lunatics...'"

Kimiko made a face at that, and quickly turned away. 'It's just like Ran to pass up a perfect opportunity to slaughter our foes based on that kooky prophet, but ignore **my** warnings and send Shio and Yamato to their doom.' "So what do you plan to do now?"

The vampire lord sighed. "My assistance is needed in capturing our newest recruit, it would seem. We should-"

Ran stopped speaking and frowned. "Do you hear that?"

Kimiko grimaced as the distant noise reached her ears as well. "It sounds like a rocket engine. I imagine that our opponents aren't so keen to avoid a confrontation as we are."

Ran nodded irritably. "That would be the blonde girl, then? The cyborg you told me about? Does she mean to land on top of us?"

"Oh, no, don't worry," Kimiko mumbled, having had much more recent and extensive experience with modern weapons, and being able to more precisely identify the device, "I imagine that particular engine isn't going to 'land' anywhere." She then leaned forward, calling out to the driver of the vehicle. "You'll want to brace yourself. It appears we're in for a battle."

_KROOM!!_

* * *

Asuka nodded as she watched the armor-piercing missile stab into the back of the limousine, blowing out the entire rear half of the vehicle and sending hot, flaming shards of metal flying in all directions.

"That's a start. Girls, you're with me; the moment you see something come out of the wreckage, you let loose with everything you've got. Tsukino, restrict your ordinance to low-yield explosives and take them on from a distance. Saotome, take off and then hit them from behind the moment you see an opportunity." The police captain barked out orders one after another as she dashed through the lot of a car dealership that had closed down for the night. "Take cover and don't let them get too close! I know they regenerate, but if you keep up your attacks, then they won't be able to strike back!"

Sailor Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter, all already transformed, moved into a jog to keep pace with their temporary commander without overtaking her. Cyber Moon hovered overhead, another pair of missiles already poking out of her forearms. Ranma dashed along the side, his blades already in his hands; after landing on top of one of the larger vehicles, he jumped up into the air and then vanished from sight completely.

Once Asuka was in a comfortable firing range of the streets, she pressed up against the side of a car and peered over the hood at the smoldering wreckage of the vehicle, wishing for the twentieth time that she had thought to stuff a change of clothes into Usagi before they'd left; sure, she was armed, but a long dress and high heels didn't make the best combat gear.

The fact that the Senshi outfits weren't much better designed wasn't much comfort, unfortunately.

"I just don't understand why we're going after him now," Sailor Venus complained as she rushed up next to Asuka, taking cover at the other end of the vehicle. "Couldn't this wait until the rest of your men are around? Or better yet, in the daytime, when vampires are weak and stuff?"

"It certainly could," Asuka mumbled as she continued staring at the wreck, waiting for a target, "but Ran piqued my interest, so we're attacking now."

"What do you mean?" Mercury asked, pressing her back against a short concrete wall separating the lot from the sidewalk.

"I mean that Ran made one lousy attempt to kill me and then gave up," Asuka explained. "I'm not going to lie to you; I'm pretty sure he and his girlfriend could have massacred us all if they'd tried, under those conditions. But they didn't. That leads me to two possible reasons why: One, he doesn't want us dead. Maybe he really does want us as vampires working for him instead, though that little hypnotist's trick he pulled back there makes me doubt it."

"What's the other possibility?" Venus asked, glancing at Cyber Moon as the cyborg girl botched her landing and fell on her face just a few feet from Jupiter.

"That he's afraid of us," Asuka said, a slight smirk on her face. "Why he might be afraid doesn't matter; whether it's our reputation, a moment of weakness, or just him playing for time, Ran doesn't want to fight us before he's ready. That's more than enough reason for us to challenge him **now**."

All was silent for a moment as the women readied themselves, still staring into the obscuring smoke of the explosion.

"Well, we can't challenge him now if he just sits in his stupid wrecked limo all night," Sailor Jupiter groused, tightening her hands into fists. "Why isn't he coming out? That couldn't have killed the both of them, could it?"

"No way..." Asuka mumbled. "Something's not right, here..."

Ignoring Cyber Moon as she spat up some concrete, Asuka stood up and glared into the night sky, rather than at the wrecked vehicle.

"I know you can hear me, so you may as well come out now! We're going to find you!"

The air was still a silent for a few seconds, before a voice boomed back. "And when you do find us... then what? What will you do to us, little human?"

Asuka recognized the voice as belonging to Ran, though she wasn't able to pinpoint its source. "What then? Then I'm going to shoot you. A lot. I'll chase you as far as I can, and keep fighting you so long as I have bullets and ideas."

"Such insolence... what makes you think you have any chance against us?"

"Well, assuming you heard my little pep talk a bit earlier, you can call it a hunch. It's up to you to vindicate it or not," the police captain said, crouching back into her cover.

Mercury frowned as she scanned the area with her computer. "He's around here somewhere... but where?"

"Ah, to be so willful and defiant," the voice boomed. "Beautiful, passionate, intelligent... I would dearly like to invite you into our ranks, lovely Captain."

"We went over that, bloodsucker, it 'aint happening," Asuka snapped. 'C'mon, show yourself, you cocky bastard... I know you're dying for a monologue...'

"Indeed, you made yourself quite clear," Ran said, still remaining hidden, "And turning you, as you are, without your cooperation, would be... more trouble than it's worth."

Everyone tensed at the presence of a definite sense of... amusement within the reverberating speech.

"Indeed, with the... exception of your cybernetic blonde friend, all of you are spoiled, suitable only as feed and worthless pawns. However..."

"However..." Asuka prompted.

"Wait, wait, WAIT!" Sailor Venus suddenly shouted, putting her hands into a "T" formation. "Hold everything! Moon is the ONLY one here who's a virgin? Then that means..."

Sailor Venus stared suspiciously at Sailor Mercury, and Jupiter and Moon followed suit a second later once they caught up to that train of thought.

"What? Are you serious?"

"You? When did you...?"

"And you didn't TELL any of us? I want details!"

Mercury's face turned a brilliant red as she searched for some sort of response. "Th-That's... I... uhm, it's... that is-"

"That is NOT important right now!" Asuka snapped. "This is a battlefield! Save the gossip for later!"

"Actually, I have a question for the scary boss vampire guy, for clarification," Jupiter suddenly said, raising her hand in the air. "So, when you say that you need 'virgins' for the vampire thing, are we talking STRICTLY male-female penetration virgins?"

Sailor Mercury fell over as Asuka slapped her forehead. "How is THAT relevant?"

"Well, he said that Moon was clean, right?" Jupiter explained. "But don't you remember that one trip to Nara, with the 'special sake', when-"

"We swore never to speak of that again!" Venus shouted suddenly, her face flushing to match Mercury's.

"Well, I think it's kind of important!" Jupiter insisted, shrugging her shoulders. "I mean, if it doesn't count, then that means most of the Outer Senshi are at risk. Heck, maybe ALL the Outer Senshi. I'll bet Pluto wouldn't be so frigid if she'd had any in the last couple thousand years."

Asuka groaned weakly. "I am SO sorry," she apologized profusely to the disembodied voice. "You don't have to answer any of that. Please, you can continue mocking and threatening us."

"... Yes. Thank you," Ran's voice said, sounding somewhat uncomfortable. "I will admit I don't know anything of these... 'Outer Senshi' or whatnot, but I am quite aware of another of your order who is... suitable."

Cyber Moon gasped, and a chill ran down her spine. That chill was replaced by red-hot rage a moment later, and her eyes flared a brilliant blue as her wrists split open into cannons and missile racks slid up out of her shoulders. "You bastard! You keep your filthy, undead hands off of Tuxedo Kamen!" After all the times he had been kidnapped and used against the Senshi, no way was she going to let him be turned!

There was a moment of absolute silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire that still engulfed Ran's limousine.

"Who?" The vampire lord asked.

Cyber Moon's fury promptly evaporated. "Tuxedo Kamen? Tall, handsome, eloquent? Throws roses and dresses real fancy?" There was more silence, and she looked around for a moment, still not spotting their opponent. "The vampire lady knows who I'm talking about, if she's still around."

"Kimiko?" The voice asked hesitantly.

"Don't bother," a different, feminine voice boomed back. "I've seen him in action. Not a good investment."

Venus scratched her head in confusion. "Well, shoot. Who does he mean, then?"

"Maybe it is one of the Outers, but he just doesn't know they're called that?" Jupiter ventured.

Ran's disembodied voice growled. "The prophet called her the 'flame princess.' Ring any bells?"

All at once, the Senshi did a double-take.

"What? Mars? Really?" Venus asked, making a face. "I mean, she'd never said anything either way, but I'd always figured she'd been around the block a few times..."

"I KNEW IT!!" Jupiter shouted, slamming a fist onto the trunk of the car she was hiding behind. "It all makes so much SENSE now! Not the vampire thing, but... well, I mean, I guess that makes sense too..."

"Well, she WAS my second guess, though I admit I'm still a little surprised," Mercury mumbled, hoping that her statement wouldn't remind anybody to question her sexual exploits.

"Huh. Well... if you're sure," Cyber Moon said, scratching her head. "But it doesn't matter anyway! We're going to stop you here and now!" Then she frowned as she saw something in her peripheral vision. "Hey, where's Asuka-chan going?"

The police captain was, in fact, dashing across the street toward the wrecked limo, having tired of the ridiculous conversation.

"Let them yammer on," she growled, her pistol at the ready as she approached the flames in a crouch, "if I don't find something to shoot soon, I'm going to end up murdering someone who doesn't really deserve it."

Reaching the edge of the debris, she got as close as possible to protect herself from attack, and then peered into the shattered windows of the vehicle.

Within seconds, she spotted something human-sized shifting about in the burning rubble, and slowly raised her weapon.

"Syaaaah!" All at once, a burning human face appeared in the window and then pushed forward through the empty frame, a pair of bright, blood-red lights glaring from empty eye sockets as the otherworldly creature's shoulders got caught in the relatively small crawlspace.

_Blam!_ Asuka felt no small amount of satisfaction as the immolated monstrosity squealed and fell back into the limo, its brains gushing out the back of its head.

_Klunk!_ The police captain whirled around when she heard something land on the hood of the vehicle, and then unloaded two more shots into the burning humanoid that had been crawling over the limo, sending it reeling back into the flames.

"Look out!" Asuka recognized the voice, and a moment later the plasma bolts, as belonging to Cyber Moon, and was pleasantly surprised to see another of the strange fire creatures being blasted aside once she'd turned around.

That particular target writhed in place for a few seconds as the plasma slowly burned through the blazing form's considerable heat resistance, until Asuka put the thing out of its misery with another bullet to the forehead.

"I don't understand," Asuka mumbled as she quickly backed off from the limo, back to the car lot. "Are those vampires? No... I don't think so... but..."

"Hey! You whore! What do you think you're doing to my fire ghouls?"

All the humans and semi-humans present snapped their heads toward the voice, which belonged, it seemed, to a haze of sickly green flames that were hovering over the car dealership building.

"Ah, yes. I was honestly hoping that the introductions could be put off until you had been eaten and the point was moot, but at usual, you prove more persistent than I'd hoped. May I present Mortis, my chauffeur and bodyguard."

The Senshi all cringed slightly when the bizarre flames receded, revealing the newest elder vampire. It was a female, alarmingly skinny, with straight, white hair in a shoulder-length bowl cut. She was wearing a gray pantsuit and tie, which seemed entirely appropriate for a chauffeur, and a solid black blindfold, which appeared to be quite the opposite.

"His chauffeur is blind? That doesn't seem like a very good idea, does it?" Jupiter mumbled over to Cyber Moon, who nodded rapidly.

"Ugh. All women. How boring," the vampiress scoffed, rubbing her nose with a bony finger as she bared her fangs.

"I realize it's not ideal, but they've worked very hard to dig an early grave for themselves," Ran explained, "help them fill it, would you? I have to meet with a young woman for dinner."

Before Asuka could give any orders in regards to the hiding vampire lord, a huge swarm of bats suddenly bolted into the air from all around the lot, emerging from the shadows and taking to the air.

"He's getting away! Tsukino!" The police captain shouted, keeping her eyes on Mortis; obviously her handgun would have been utterly useless in taking down the flurry of bats, and likely just as useful in taking down Ran himself. "Girls, back her up!"

Cyber Moon nodded grimly, and then launched herself into the air as her back opened up into jet boosters. "I've got him!"

"Venus love and beauty shock!"

"Sparkling wide pressure!"

"Shine aqua illusion!"

One by one the bolts of light, electricity, and ice blasted by the pursuing cyborg, cutting into the swarm of flying mammals and sending huge swaths of bats plummeting to the ground in flames and frost.

Once Cyber Moon actually caught up to the flurry of exploding animals, she slowed down and hesitated, unsure of which weapon would be most useful for the situation.

_Whump!_ As it so happened, however, the matter quickly became moot as a rather large, flying corpse smashed into her from behind, latching onto her arm and pulling her down toward the ground.

"GAAAAAAAAAUGH!!" _CRASH!_

The Senshi winced as their princess once again learned about the more difficult and important aspect of flying: landing.

"Moon! Are you okay?" Mercury asked, horrified that her friend had impacted hard concrete at that speed.

Asuka, while also concerned, had her attention focused on a much more active problem than Usagi's injuries.

Gliding gently through the air on large, feathered, stringy wings covered in dried blood and leather stitching, was a ghoul.

The police captain's face darkened as the creature began flapping its wings rapidly, slowing its descent and landing on top of a minivan much better than Usagi could have dreamed of. "It's... It's a flying **ghoul**. That's just not **right**."

"Ah, I believe that Master Ran forgot to warn you," Mortis said smugly, wagging a finger at her opponents, "They call me the ghoul master. I assume you've seen the ghouls of other vampires? Weak, slow, mindless lumps of meat? Pitiful excuses for puppets, I'm sure you'll agree."

She lifted her almost skeletal arms into the air, and arcane symbols appeared on the back of her hands in a glowing, emerald green blaze. "I do better than that. I take those worthless sacks of flesh, and turn them into powerful, deadly works of ART. And now, by the will of Master Ran, you'll become the newest additions to my beautiful gallery!"

"You don't say..." Asuka mumbled as she carefully took aim at the vampiress's head.

At the last moment, she shifted her aim to the side, and Mortis blanched as her flying ghoul's head rocked back from a .45 caliber slug piercing its skull. "You bitch! Do you have any idea how long it takes to make those things?"

Asuka ignored the enraged midian and turned toward her compatriots. "Tsukino! Can you take off again? The big fish are getting away!"

"Uhhn..." Cyber Moon groaned as she rubbed her head. "No... my computer thing says the rockets are damaged..."

"Damn it!" The police captain cursed. She glanced toward Mercury. "I take it we're surrounded?"

Even as the genius Senshi nodded timidly, shapes began emerging from every shadowed corner of the car lot, stumbling out from behind the main office and stealthily dashing across the rooftops.

"I thought so," Asuka mumbled. "All right people, listen up. Stay close to each other and try and keep to cover. Use quicker attacks if you have them, and try to keep the enemy at a distance; these things are more fragile, but persistent."

"Right!" The others said, steeling themselves as they watched several silhouettes hop from one car to the next, long blades glinting in the moonlight.

'Saotome, don't let me down...' Asuka thought, taking a deep breath as she reloaded. "Fire at will!"

It became clear very quickly that their opponents were not ordinary ghouls.

Granted, the Senshi had never been involved in a full-scale firefight with the vampires' zombie henchmen before, but even they had a sense that the desperate viciousness of the ostensibly mindless drones was far beyond the norm.

The first group to attack were fast, agile ghouls that had both hands chopped off and replaced by long, rust-caked talons that had been firmly bolted to their crumbling sinews. These creatures leapt above the scattered cover of the car lot, bounding forward past Asuka's sparse covering fire to dash head-long into the Senshi in the hopes of surviving long enough to engage in hand-to-hand.

"Venus love me chain!" Sailor Venus shouted, sending a string of hearts twirling through the advancing ghouls. Several of the vile creatures were entangled as they leapt blindly toward their prey, heedless of the bizarre-looking snare even as it wrapped around them.

Asuka quickly pushed aside her revulsion at the painfully silly-looking attack, and took the opportunity to shoot the heads off of two of the clawed ghouls. "Keep it up! Don't let them get close!"

The second group went almost unnoticed at first, given the panic and danger aroused by the claw ghouls. These ghouls, the polar opposite of the clawed zombies, were thick, ponderous, lumbering brutes with bulging muscles and skin that had been patched together from natural, rotting flesh, stitched leather, and plates of junk metal that had been fashioned into crude armor against the decaying body. These creatures carried large, thick shields in one hand, which they used to cover their advance, and heavy weapons in the other, mostly axes.

Jupiter hesitated a moment when she saw the first of the armored assault ghouls, and then thrust her hands forward. "Sparkling wide pressure!" _KA-ZRAAK!_

The shield and armor did nothing to protect the assault ghoul from the attack, and it trembled mightily as its internal organs were rapidly cooked by the tremendous surge of energy.

Jupiter promptly backed away as more started filing forward toward the battle. "You guys! Over here! We have armored ones coming!"

Cyber Moon clumsily bisected a clawed ghoul with her energy blades, and then whirled toward the new threat, her missile racks sliding up out of her shoulders.

Jupiter and Mercury were forced to duck down as the flurry of mini-missiles sailed over them and scattered into the implacable, armored undead, detonating in furious waves that illuminated the entire car lot and made some of the ghouls flinch just from the glare.

Up above the explosions, Mortis growled as she watched the explosions consume her assault ghouls; although their armor fared better against missiles than magical lightning, the sheer scale of Cyber Moon's weapons seemed more than capable of incinerating her entire army if she didn't intervene.

"_Sigh_... I just wish there were at least **one** guy around. I hate feeding on women," the elder vampire mumbled as more arcane tattoos appeared over her face, glowing the same, ghastly color as her hands.

"Careful what you wish for," came a perfectly masculine voice from behind her.

_Schlupt!_ The nosferatu gasped as the tip of a short blade burst from her chest, having stabbed directly through her heart.

"Wh-What the-?!" She squirmed against the pain even as the tattoos on her face and hands started to flicker, their energies dying; with her body trying desperately to maintain her heart's function, she was effectively paralyzed, and her powers were useless.

Ranma planted a foot against the elder vampire's back, ignoring her surprised stuttering as he pulled his Jackal from behind his back.

"Whoa!" Before the pigtailed man could fire, a pair of claws flashed toward him from behind, and he was forced to use his pistol to block the blades as a clawed ghoul ambushed him.

'I didn't think her stupid minions would jump me so fast! I have to finish her off quick!' Ranma kicked the clawed ghoul away, but didn't have time to do much else as a pair of flying ghouls dive-bombed him from both sides, screaming as their hands grasped for a target.

Spitting a quick curse, Ranma leapt away from the vampiress, sliding backward against the surface of the roof as the flying ghouls slammed into each other at near terminal velocity, shattering their bones and mangling their abused and poorly stitched limbs.

Ranma raised his pistol to fire, and blinked as he realized that one of the ghouls had managed to take hold of his kodachi - which had been left in Mortis' back - right before impact, pulling the weapon free. "Ah, crud." _BLAM! BLAM!_

Both bullets sailed unerringly toward the vampiress's head, even as the undead in question gasped painfully.

_Crack! Thwam!_ Ranma recoiled when the projectiles slammed into a completely different target, which flickered into view even as it let out a tortured moan and subsequently evaporated into dark smoke.

"What... Was that a... a ghost?" Ranma asked, blinking rapidly. It had only been visible for only a moment, but the figure that had taken the bullet had been an older woman in a kimono with long, braided hair and blood running down her arms.

Mortis finally regained enough of her senses to feel her powers return, and she turned slowly, her mouth twitching into a smirk. "Yes. Yes, it was. Ghouls are not the only creatures that heed my summons. I am a mistress of ALL lesser undead. The spirits that writhe with hatred of those that live gladly come to aid me." Her smirk turned into a grin. "My, you're a handsome one. I'll have to have some fun with you. Would you prefer to play before or after I drain you of every last drop of blood?"

Ranma snorted. "You're not serious, are you?" _Shwk!_ A quick slash of his remaining kodachi behind him decapitated a clawed ghoul in mid-lunge, and he aimed his Jackal almost casually to the side before firing, his eyes still locked on Mortis.

_BLAM!_ The fire ghoul that had been climbing up to the roof of the office didn't have time to scream before its head was obliterated by the silver round, and its body only hesitated a moment before it fell down limply to the ground below.

"I don't think there's any way you can beat me," Ranma continued, approaching carefully. "I mean, I'm guessing you do most of your fighting with your zombies, right? When's the last time you had to fight someone yourself?"

The vampiress chuckled condescendingly. "Oh? Is that what you think?" After a brief laugh, another pattern appeared in a flash of bright green, this time directly on top of the blindfold over her face, this one in the pattern of an elongated eye. "Now... hold him in place while I run away!"

Ranma would have facefaulted at seeing someone else suddenly employing his family's signature technique, but was held upright as several translucent gray tendrils appeared and wrapped around his arms and legs.

He growled as Mortis leapt toward the streets, and glanced briefly at the pair of generic-looking, faceless gray ghosts that had wrapped around him. A moment later, Ranma began to glow a soft blue, and the spirits bristled as the life energy aggravated their undead forms.

"Mouko takabisha!" Ranma shouted, releasing the energies for his signature energy blast as a sudden burst of energy from all over his body, rather than a focused bolt. The ghost shrieked weakly as they were torn to shreds from the discharge, and vanished into more smoke.

"Forget it! You're not getting away!" The martial artist declared, leaping after the retreating vampiress.

Asuka was both pleased and annoyed to hear Ranma take off in pursuit of their primary opponent, guessing that the current attack force of ghouls wouldn't be falling limp any time soon.

"Somebody look for a line of retreat!" She shouted as she emptied the rest of her clip into another clawed ghoul that was trying to get Mercury from behind. "This is a waste of our time! We need to get out of here!"

The Senshi's responses were lost in the sounds of another magical volley, wiping out the last ranks of the assault ghouls.

"HRRROOOOOUGH!!"

Asuka turned around as she was reloading, and growled as she saw a new kind of ghoul clambering past Mercury, walking on its hands and feet to hide behind the cars. Unlike the other ghouls, this one seemed fairly normal, if not louder than usual. The only notable thing about it was that its belly was horribly distended, and it swung back and forth as the undead drone scrambled furiously toward Cyber Moon's back.

"Moon! Behind you!"

Almost immediately, Cyber Moon's shoulder opened up and one of her articulated, robotic appendages folded out, this one flipping backward to aim a long weapon covered in wires at the approaching ghoul.

_FWEEOOOM!_ A blazing beam of red promptly seared a glowing hole through the ghoul's skull, and it tumbled forward for a few seconds as its body took the time to realize that its brain was dead for real.

The laser weapon began sliding back into Cyber Moon's shoulder, having defended her back without distracting her from shooting down the remaining clawed ghouls.

As impressive as the brief conflict was, Mercury and Asuka were both very worried when the ghoul's belly suddenly swelled even further, and began to glow a fierce, hot red.

_BWOOOM!!_ Cyber Moon didn't even have time to shout in pain as the ghoul detonated with tremendous force, knocking over the nearest cars and slamming the other women into the vehicles they were using as cover.

"Ow! What in-" Jupiter rubbed her head irritably, then yelped as her cybernetic princess bounced past her, trailing sparks and smoke. "SAILOR MOON!! H-How did-"

Venus and Mercury were about to rush over as well when Asuka snapped at them, "You two keep covering us! If you see any more of those fat ones, put them down and then get clear!" She grit her teeth as she dashed over to Cyber Moon, keeping her head low. 'Suicide bomber ghouls! She has suicide bomber ghouls!' She had to admit that the prospect made a lot of tactical sense when she gave it some thought, but at the moment she was in no mood to appreciate her foe's sense of strategy.

"Moon! You still alive?" She asked, pressing up against the side of an overturned truck.

Jupiter was hovering helplessly over the Senshi's cybernetic leader, watching as sparks and small flames burst from the girl's shredded backside.

"I... I'm okay..." Cyber Moon said weakly, giving a hesitant and unconvincing smile. "It... It probably looks much worse than it is..."

"Glad to hear it," Asuka said grimly, scanning the immediate area for any more approaching enemies, "I think you'd better bust out the spider-bots and patch yourself up then, don't you agree?"

"Ah..." The blonde cyborg slowly pushed herself up onto her knees as her internal computer beeped.

**Damage report: Indirect impact at 0.3 meters from high-yield biological explosive. Trauma classification: High-level concussive damage incurred. Critical damage to frame superstructure. Total systems down: 32. Powering down neural substructure to prevent energy leaks.**

Cyber Moon shuddered as she felt her muscles involuntarily relax, and she slumped back onto the ground. 'Hey, can you bring out the spider-thingies, already?'

**Negative. System analysis indicates that the repair bay shielding was damaged and cannot be opened.**

"Awww... it says that the doors are jammed shut, I think!" The magical cyborg moaned, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Asuka frowned. "Those are the ones on your back, right?"

Cyber Moon nodded despondently.

Without discussing the issue further, Asuka stood up, pulled her leg back, and then gave the downed cyborg a swift kick under her armpit.

_Clang!_ "Ow!" Both Asuka and her "patient" shouted out in pain from the impact, and Jupiter lurched back as the broken metal plates suddenly popped out of Moon's back and clattered onto the ground.

"Hey, it worked!" Jupiter cried in relief as the two mini-bots clambered out of Cyber Moon's back and got to work with their welding torches. "Wow, it's a good thing we have you around! I think only Mars would have thought of that otherwise!"

The police captain nodded. "Speaking of Mars, if we don't hurry up and get to her..." she trailed off as she looked around the smoldering remains of the car lot, the hiss of the repair bots' torches the only audible sound. "Wait a minute... are we all clear?" She asked, honestly surprised that they had held out against the ghoul ambush.

Venus shrugged. "I haven't seen or heard anything since they got Moon." The space surrounding the crater where the ghoul had detonated was liberally decorated with pieces of trashed vehicles and corpses; while the clawed and fire ghouls had to be dealt with carefully, the assault ghouls had proven completely ineffective against the Senshi's magic, and the entire lot was strewn with pieces of armored flesh from where Venus' attacks had hit them hardest.

"So the idea was to disable her to take out most of our firepower so we couldn't chase after them?" Jupiter asked, gripping her hand into a fist. 'Damn it! If only I had been paying more attention, maybe this wouldn't have happened!'

"More likely that Saotome got Morty, or whatever her stupid name was," Asuka mumbled. "I don't think they'd let us off that easy."

Mercury groaned suddenly, and all eyes turned toward her.

"They didn't," she explained bleakly, pointing toward the office building. "Over that way. I don't know what it is, but-"

_CRASH!_ Glass and concrete burst outward as a massive shape barreled through one of the windows facing the lot, as well as the bit of wall immediately surrounding the pane.

"Groooohg..."

Jupiter and Venus recoiled immediately as they peeked over the cars they were using as cover, repulsed. The creature that had come through was enormous, almost ten feet tall, with flesh that looked to be a patchwork of stitched-together skin and leather over massive braids of pulsating muscle. Like the assault ghouls, plates of thick, rusted metal were bolted onto its chest, legs, and biceps, protecting its most vulnerable point. It also had a thick, bucket-shaped iron helmet protecting its head, with only a thin slot for its two glowing red eyes to peer out at its prey.

The strangest thing about the abomination, however, were its arms. Rather than having two large, humanoid hands, it had what looked like a steamshovel claw mounted on its right arm, and on the left some sort of fleshy, puckered mouth at the end of a bulbous, swollen wrist.

"You know, I could really stand to end the night without fighting this thing," Asuka mumbled, sighing as she ducked back down behind the car. "Any chance we can move Moon out of here fast enough to retreat?"

Mercury shook her head. "If we move her now, we'll just hurt her more!" She protested.

"Besides, what if that thing follows us?" Venus continued, even as the heavy footfalls of the abomination got closer. "It's not like those other zombies; that thing could do some real damage!"

"Crap!" Asuka snarled. "Well, then you three can go ahead and blast it! Nothing I've got is going to scratch that thing!"

"Gotcha!" Venus said cheerfully, standing up and posing before the advancing monster. "The bigger they are, the easier it is for them to squish you into a mushy pulp!"

"Incorrect, and yet, strangely accurate," Jupiter mumbled.

"Shut up and shoot it already!" Asuka growled.

The abomination stopped advancing, and its claw opened and closed loudly. _Clang! Clang!_

"Take this!" Sailor Venus shouted, twirling in place. "Venus crescent moon beam!" The stream of pure magic power erupted from her hands and sailed toward the undead chimera, causing the nearby vehicles to tremble from the force of the attack.

The abomination groaned irritably as it lurched forward, and then latched onto a car with its metal claw, the steel fingers digging through glass and steel to give the monstrosity enough leverage.

"Hrrrrrn..." with an exceptionally dull battlecry, the abomination hurled the vehicle straight into the oncoming energy beam.

_BWOOM!_ The car was ripped apart by the force as the attack detonated, sending pieces of shredded steel raining down all over the lot.

"Gwah!" Venus ducked back down behind a truck, holding her arms over her head to protect it from the falling shrapnel.

"Well, that's just great," Asuka muttered darkly. "Size, muscle, AND brains." She knew very well that one of the minor strengths and major weaknesses of the ghouls was their total lack of self-preservation instinct; most ghouls didn't avoid needless destruction even in the simple case of avoiding an obvious obstacle or attack, which wasn't fully compensated for by the ghouls' fearlessness in the heat of battle. This creature, however, seemed to possess a defense, and Asuka was quite certain that she didn't want to know what its offense was like.

Mercury and Jupiter both stood up as the last chunks of debris hit the ground. "All right, now it's our turn to-"

The taller girl was interrupted as Mercury pointed to the abomination. The entire creature spent a moment trembling mightily, and the Senshi could just make out some sort of flesh sack on the abomination's back inflating briefly before contracting again.

Immediately afterward, the abomination's left arm started swelling suspiciously as the mouth of the appendage was aimed toward Mercury's position. "Wait! What's it doing?"

"Damn it! Never mind! Run! Run now!" Asuka screamed, waving the Senshi back.

_Sploorch!_ A thick, repulsive-smelling stream of yellowish slime burst from the quivering orifice, and Mercury dove to the side desperately as the vile substance splashed all over the car she had been hiding behind. Almost instantly, most of the vehicle was vaporized, the metals turning into a thick, toxic puff of smoke that surged upward not unlike a mushroom cloud.

Mercury squeaked nervously as she clambered away from the pool of rapidly weakening acid, which quickly melted down the rest of the car before pouring down into the hissing pools of inert liquids forming in small craters on the surface of the concrete lot.

"Okay, well, now we know what it can do on the attack," Asuka said, sighing. "Okay ladies, this is the plan! Move away from Moon until she can move again! We need to draw it away from her! Try and get around and hit it from behind if you can! Above all, AVOID THAT ACID! Either kill it now or just buy time, but I need you to live through this!"

Venus and Mercury nodded nervously, and Asuka was fairly surprised when Sailor Jupiter smiled.

"Heh. You know, I guess taking orders from you isn't too bad, actually," the thunder Senshi offered, winking.

"I'm glad to hear it," Asuka said unenthusiastically. "Now hurry up and cover me."

* * *

"By the black star! What does it take to LOSE this maniac?" Mortis asked incredulously as she levitated across the rooftops, trailing a haze of smoldering green fire.

_Bwam!_ Another silver bullet slammed into nothingness, which rapidly coalesced into ghostly material being just in time to vanish once again while releasing a tormented scream.

The vampiress halted and frowned as she watched another one of her guardian spirits lose its grip on the mortal world and slip into the afterlife. 'I only have two spirits left... if I let things continue on this way...'

_Tak!_ Ranma landed on top of a utility shed that lie in the opposite corner of the roof Mortis was on, and calmly ejected the empty clip from the Jackal before replacing it with a new one.

Mortis gulped as she saw the engraving of the Christian cross carved into the ammunition magazine, labeling the contents conspicuously. "It appears I'll have to do something about that gun of yours. Such toys are too dangerous for the likes of you, anyway."

Ranma snorted as he took aim again. "What're you gonna do? Up here your zombies can't get to you very quickly, and your ghosts are a joke. You've got nothin'."

"A joke, you say?" Mortis asked, the eye symbol on her forehead flaring up once again. "I'd have to agree... in the sense that the next few moments are going to be absolutely **hilarious**."

"Yeah, whatever," the pigtailed cop mumbled, pulling the trigger of his weapon.

He was reasonably surprised, naturally, when instead of the tension of the gun trigger surrendering and subsequently firing, instead the trigger pushed back and dug into his finger like a sharp tooth.

Ranma's confusion was exacerbated when his gun suddenly growled at him.

"Hraaaugh!" The barrel of the Jackal suddenly split apart in a horizontal seam, opening up and growing sharp, hooked teeth to resemble an animal's snout and maw.

"What the hell?" Ranma shouted, staring in shock as his gun started thrashing about and snapping its jaws in his hands. The unreal scenario reached a peak when the iron sight at the rear end of the gun bulged into a general convex shape, and then split open to reveal a single eyeball staring hatefully at him.

"Gyeeah!" The Jackal snarled, lurching from left to right within Ranma's grip as its eye began to glow a furious red. On the other side of the roof, Mortis smiled darkly, and twin torches of emerald flame appeared in her hands.

Ranma, for his part, continued staring at his gun, and then his expression suddenly evaporated into mild irritation. "Knock it off!" With that short rebuke, the pigtailed man punched his own gun in the barrel.

Mortis gaped as the Jackal let out a sharp whimper, like a dog that had been kicked.

Ranma glared into the single eye staring up at him, though it now looked less angry and more surprised. "I swear, you either shut up and spit bullets like you're supposed to, or I'm going to take out one of those weird exorcism rounds and cram it in your eye! You got that?"

The pistol stiffened, and Mortis could swear that she saw a sweatdrop roll down the gun handle.

After a moment, the eye widened, and the entire gun wiggled up and down, in its best imitation of a nod.

"H-Hey! Wait a minute!" Mortis said nervously, backing away as the fireballs in her hand dissipated. "You can't... I mean, what just..."

Ranma took aim once again and squeezed the trigger.

_BWOOM!_ A report more fitting for a cannon burst from the mouth of the Jackal, followed by a shining silver slug surrounded by an unholy green aura.

"WHOA!" Mortis put her last phantom on full defense, and the ghost flickered into view in front of the elder vampire, its burnt face locked in a picture of constant, semi-transparent suffering.

The ghost disintegrated instantly from the impact of the undead aura, leaving the bullet to sail unimpeded into the nosferatu's unprotected chest.

"AAAIIIIEEEEEEEE!!" Mortis screamed out in agony as the explosive slug detonated within her, slicing into the contents of her ribcage with shards of blessed silver.

The elder vampire threw her head back as she clutched her bleeding chest, and then fell to her knees, panting.

Ranma frowned, and then looked his gun in the eye. "You're setting my aim off," he muttered dangerously, "that missed her heart by like, four or five centimeters." The Jackal gulped nervously, and the eye quivered in fear. "I'm gonna be nice and assume that was 'cause your throat isn't good at firing bullets straight like a gun is made to do, but the next shot had better go into her forehead when I aim it there."

Once again, the Jackal did its best to nod, and once again Ranma aimed the weapon forward and squeezed the trigger.

_BWOOM!_ Mortis' energies reached out desperately to the possessing spirit within the Jackal, trying to pacify the poltergeist, but it was to no avail as another silvery bolt encased in otherwordly green sailed toward the hapless midian.

_Kablam!_ Both Ranma and Mortis were surprised when a blue fireball intercepted the bullet, creating a dark explosion that nearly knocked both off their feet.

With a subtle shimmer, Kimiko flickered into view in front of Mortis, her mantle whipping about furiously in the wind.

"K-Kimiko-sama!" Mortis gasped out, clutching her chest as much from the sudden relief as from the pain that still wracked her body.

Ranma stepped back a moment, and made sure to widen his senses to detect anything coming at him from behind. "Huh. You're still around, are ya?" He idly started stroking the muzzle of his gun, and was only slightly disturbed when the Jackal made a pleased, low-pitched grumbling noise as a result. "Then I'm guessing King Bloodsucker is still hiding nearby, isn't he?"

"Don't be in such a rush to get in over your head, human," Kimiko said imperiously, planting her hands on her hips. "I assure you, I'm more than a match for you myself."

"You know, it's funny," Ranma said off-handedly, sliding his remaining kodachi from its sheath and holding it at the ready, "you freaks keep saying stuff like that to me. And then you keep dying." The Jackal chuckled throatily, and its eye glared at the vampiresses opposite its new master.

"Then I suppose we should skip the pointless bravado for now," Kimiko said calmly, spreading her arms as her hands were suddenly engulfed in bright blue flames. Behind her, Mortis swallowed nervously and crawled away, still clutching the hole in her chest.

Ranma said nothing in response, still being very careful to stay aware of his flank; he was pretty sure that he could take Kimiko on alone, now that his weapon had been unexpectedly upgraded and he had plenty of room to maneuver and no one else to protect. Although he had never seen the elder vampire fight in earnest before, she, like all the others, suffered from a general lack of true combat experience and sense of the battlefield, which vampires typically tried to fill in with their innate physical strengths. No matter how powerful she was, he was sure he could surprise her if she left even the slightest weakness show.

Kimiko tired of the stalemate after a few seconds, and then let loose her attacks, firing a pair of azure fireballs that rotated in the air opposite each other in a corkscrew orbit.

Ranma crossed his arms over his chest as his own aura flared brightly, illuminating the roof. "Mouka takabisha!" He screamed, throwing his energy forward into the vampiress' attack.

The two attacks collided close to the utility shed, and Kimiko frowned as the brief flare of light and flame dissipated to reveal that her opponent was no longer there.

_BWOOM!_ Kimiko suddenly burst into bats just before a spectre-enhanced bullet sailed through the spot her head had occupied a moment before, coming at her from behind.

"Clever boy..." said Kimiko's voice as the swarm of flying mammals whirled about and started toward Ranma, spreading out so as to better avoid the martial artist's defenses.

"Ah, damn it!" Ranma cursed, leaping away from the first roof and plummeting a good twenty feet down to the adjacent building. 'Crud! I knew I should have finished off the injured one while I had a free shot!' It was his sensibilities as a martial artist that kept him from playing the part of the assassin on the battlefield, and it wouldn't have surprised anyone who knew him that Ranma gladly chose to engage a capable foe rather than finish one who couldn't fight back.

The swarm of bats took a moment to reorient themselves, and then descended on the adjacent building in a virtual tornado of fur and fangs, swirling around the martial artist as they approached him from above.

'Huh. Bullets won't do much good... can't find the "real" one... no heat around for even a small hiryuu shouten ha... smacking them all outta the air before they get to me could work, I've managed it with bees... but that's pretty exhausting, and that kind of concentration would leave me open to attack from a distance... I guess more ki blasts and running is the best I can do.'

Ranma took a deep breath.

"Burning mandala!"

"Eh?" Ranma blinked as rings of flaming plasma sailed up into the descending swarm, turning huge swathes of the maelstom into free-falling patches of burning fur and flesh.

"Ha! Back off, undead freaks!" Sailor Mars shouted as she leapt up from below, landing next to Ranma and then posing triumphantly. "Or if you're serious about feeding the local stray cat population, keep coming! I'm sure the poor things would love some roasted bat!"

The swarm was evidently not too serious about its assault, and immediately scattered, taking off in all directions and fleeing to a safe distance.

As Ranma sighed in relief, Mars smirked at him and crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, look at that; I just saved you. I guess we're even now, aren't we?"

Ranma gave her a lidded stare. "'Saved' me? From bats? What am I, a mosquito?"

Mars' eyes narrowed immediately. "You don't have to be so ungrateful, jackass!"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful and everything," the pigtailed man said, rolling his eyes, "but get real; I fought off a cyborg backed up by an artillery brigade. You scared off a bunch of rats with wings."

"Flying rats that were about to take you apart!" Mars shouted, leaning forward to glare at the impudent martial artist.

"Yeah, it would have been awful if I'd lost another teaspoon of blood in the time it would have taken me to kill 'em all," Ranma scoffed, rolling his eyes again.

Mars grabbed a hold of Ranma's collar and started shaking the man, which was about as close as she was willing to get at this point to actively strangling him. "Bats carry diseases! Do you want rabies? Or tetanus? Huh? DO YOU?!"

Up above the verbal spat, Kimiko's eyebrow twitched as she watched the exchange, and she quashed the urge to insist that she wasn't rabid.

'Kimiko,' came a telepathic command from a short distance away, 'despite their idiocy, they are still on their guard. Engage them, but be cautious. See if you can separate them.'

'Understood, Master,' she thought back, 'though I hardly need you to remind me to be cautious.'

Spreading her arms, Kimiko summoned her power to her, preparing for a massive telekinetic burst.

"I'm just sayin', you can't compare Igov to a bunch of little magical animals!" Ranma protested, "You don't have to get so worked up about it!"

"That's not the point!" Sailor Mars shouted back, "Would it kill you to show some damn respect? I didn't have to help you out, you know!"

"Well, if you didn't, you wouldn't be much of a defender of just-" Ranma cut off his retort sharply, and his eyes narrowed. "MOVE! NOW!"

Both of them leapt away from each other toward opposite sides of the roof just as Kimiko launched her attack.

_CRACK!_ A jagged fault line promptly appeared in the middle of the roof, and the entire building shook as the roof slowly started to collapse inward. Kimiko gestured at the area once again, and the process suddenly sped up rapidly, with much of the roof crumbling instantly.

"Don't go too far!" Ranma warned, leaping to another adjacent building as Sailor Mars did the same, in the opposite direction.

Kimiko guarded herself as Ranma pulled out his gun and fired as Mars unleashed a fire arrow, and the midian's body flickered back and forth as half a dozen overlapping images confused her enemies' aim.

_FWOOM!_ The flame sniper managed to find its target despite the confusing tactic, and the vampiress blocked the fire bolt with her mantle before having to levitate sharply out of the way of several more Jackal rounds.

Sailor Mars grit her teeth as she took aim with another flame sniper, and then blinked as she realized the bullets Ranma was firing were glowing green.

"Hraaayah!" The Jackal exclaimed in Ranma's hand, gouts of green sparks pouring from its mouth like the saliva of a rabid animal. _BWOOM! BWOOM!_

Mars let go of her fire arrow unconsciously, not even noticing that it missed her opponent by three meters and set a billboard over the street on fire.

"R-Ranma-kun... why is... why is your gun snarling?" She asked incredulously, her arms still in firing position, and her eyebrow twitching.

Ranma rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "Well, I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly what happened," he said as the Jackal's handle spat out the empty bullet magazine without Ranma's assistance or request, "but I think it comes down to ghosts being more afraid of me than the vampires." The empty ammo feed writhed about hungrily, and long, curved teeth came out of the bottom of the pistol grip, clenching and unclenching in anticipation of more bullets. Ranma slipped another one of the Christian-based magazines out of his belt, and then held it barely within reach of the desperate maw.

_Schlup!_ The Jackal promptly clamped onto the magazine and sucked it up into place, and then the barrel let out a short roar and a burst of green flame as it prepared to let loose once more.

"Hey, Mars!" Ranma shouted, his eyes still locked on Kimiko, "Can you crank up the rate of fire a bit? I'm going to try something!"

He didn't get a response, and the pigtailed man glanced over to his current partner, wondering why she was still standing in the same pose as before, frozen. Was it really THAT surprising that his gun had been possessed by an easily coerced evil spirit?

A second later, the fire Senshi suddenly collapsed onto the roof, unconscious, and Ranma's eyes widened; behind her head, which had been obscuring his field of vision, was a man's hand, sticking partially out of a small portal.

Instinctively, Ranma looked to the building behind him, and then he grit his teeth as he saw Ran and some German-looking vampire he had never seen before standing on top of the roof, looking down on him; Ran had his arm up to mid-forearm in a portal, while the new guy was gesturing toward the portal, probably to hold it open.

"Oh, come on!" Ranma growled, leaping away from his current location to get to the comatose Senshi.

"Don't bother!" Kimiko shouted, releasing another kinetic blade at the martial artist.

_Shwk!_ The vampiress was quite surprised when Ranma didn't stop to avoid the attack, but grit his teeth and ran straight through in order to save time.

"Urgh!" Ranma gasped as he landed on the next building, and he didn't pause to watch a splatter of blood hit the surface of the roof before he leapt for the next one that held the fire Senshi. 'Just two more seconds! That's all I nee-'

_Shooft!_ Right before he landed, the area of roof right below Mars shimmered, and her body lurched slightly before it fell straight down, as if sinking into the rooftop.

"Damn it!" Ranma cursed, reaching down toward the portal, but only hitting concrete by the time his hand got there.

Glancing upward again, he grimaced as he saw Ran smirking at him, Sailor Mars laying insensate in his arms. "You bastard! Put her down!"

"Actually, I think... no," Ran said condescendingly, staring down his nose at the police officer. "Don't think too ill of me, oh noble defender of the peace; much effort and many undead lives were sacrificed for this woman's capture." He turned toward his prize, and smiled widely as he caressed her cheek, his fangs glinting in the moonlight. "Seeing her like this... well, I must admit she already seems worth the trouble. But this one has so much more to offer than her beauty..."

"Don't touch her!" Ranma screamed, bolting forward once again.

_Shoom! Shoom!_ A pair of blue energy blasts sailed toward him from the side, and Ranma ducked into a roll as he landed on the next roof, jumping again just in time to avoid a third bolt - this one a bright green - coming at him from above.

"Kliff," Ran snapped as the martial artist continued to approach, and the German vampire nodded.

"Erk!" Ranma seemed to redirect himself in mid-air as a shimmering portal suddenly appeared in front of him, and barely managed to catch the edge of the roof with one hand before swinging himself back up and landing in a crouch.

"Hmph. Impressive," Ran mumbled, still caressing the unconscious Mars, "but it's all for naught. Tonight we are victorious."

Kliff ground his teeth angrily, quite upset at having his portal evaded with an ease that even HE would have had trouble managing. "You're DAPC, aren't you? Lord Ran told me about you... A couple of your buddies got lucky tonight and made a fool of me... I'm going to make sure they regret not finishing me off when they had the chance." He grinned insanely. "How best to do it? Should I turn you ghoul and have you stumble into the HQ? Or maybe I should decorate the entire block with your limbs?"

"You'll do no such thing," Kimiko snapped, floating forward behind the martial artist, "you'd more than likely do something stupid and get yourself killed. I'll finish... this one... myself..." she was distracted at the end from having to wipe some of the drool off of her chin; seeing his blood spill had awoken a deep, gnawing hunger within her, and she had no intention of giving her tasty treasure to anyone else, much less one of her subordinates.

"Hey, **I** should be the one to finish him off!" Mortis said petulantly, appearing next to Kimiko and still nursing the hole in her chest. "Besides the fact that I actually have something to get him back **for**, you two would just let him go to waste!" she accused, suddenly clasping her hands together and smiling. "Do you have any idea what I could do with that body? If I could get him to retain even fifty percent of his fighting skill as a ghoul, I could make an undead assassin capable of wiping out small armies!"

Ran sweatdropped as his servants started glaring at each other.

"This is ridiculous! I deserve the kill!" Kliff snarled.

"No way! I'm thinking about the team, here! This is an investment!" Mortis insisted.

"It's a moot point! I outrank both of you!" Kimiko shouted, her hands on her hips.

"Shut up," Ranma snarled, causing all the vampires to flinch back suddenly.

The martial artist was aglow with a pulsating, light blue haze, while the small flames of green orbited the Jackal as the weapon's eye stared angrily at the midians.

Ranma's eyes were locked on Sailor Mars even as he addressed the vampires surrounding him. "You idiots don't even matter to me. Stay out of my way."

Kliff saw red, and his hand trembled even as he decided on a portal location. "It'll matter when I have your intestines strung out-"

_BWOOM!_ The very moment the elder vampire opened a new portal, a silver bolt wreathed in green burst out of it and ripped into his shoulder, blowing his arm and a quarter of his torso off in an explosion of blood and gore.

"Guh! Ghg! GAAAAAH!" Kliff collapsed to his knees as he grasped at the ragged wound, his body contorted in agony.

Ranma's eyes were still locked on Ran and Sailor Mars, but the Jackal was pointed directly behind him, smoke wafting from its cackling maw.

"I warned the fool," Kimiko mumbled. "Mortis, with me. We'll settle our little quarrel after he's-"

"Stop. Both of you," Ran suddenly commanded, causing the two vampiresses to freeze in place.

"But, my lord," Mortis started, wincing when the vampire lord snapped his fingers.

"To me. NOW," Ran commanded, meeting Ranma's gaze the entire time.

The women offered no further argument, and hastily floated by Ranma to land next to their master.

"I see now what I've been blind to all this time," Ran said as Kliff slowly stood, the edges of his wound turning to wisps of shadow. "I see what we are up against. What we must destroy... and what we once possessed."

For the first time in the centuries that Kimiko had known him, she heard something akin to regret enter his voice, and she recoiled at the sound.

"I see now that perhaps my destiny, whether forged in stone or the delusions of a madman, may not be as grand as I had thought. I was so dazzled by the thought of future glory, that I did not look around me at what I had already gained. What I had to lose."

He looked down at Sailor Mars' face, and idly brushed a lock of hair away from her face. "This... This is supposed to complete the circle. To save us. When did we need saving? When did our pride, our heritage, our power fail us?"

Kimiko sighed wearily as Ran looked back up at Ranma.

"You, human. What do you fight me for? You stare calmly into oblivion, and for what?"

Ranma's brow furrowed slightly. "Well... for a few reasons, really. But the best one?"

Ran nodded silently.

"Well, I wanna say it's because of justice, right and wrong, and that sort of thing," the pigtailed man mumbled, holding onto his aura still, "or I could say it's 'cause I'm supposed to protect the Senshi, or because I don't want anyone else to have to die for your stupid, pointless vampire rebellion thing. And that would all be pretty much true, but honestly, I'm mostly doing it because it's my job."

Mortis and Kimiko blanched at the admission, and Ran's gaze hardened.

"I mean, maybe if I was a doctor or a businessman, I'd have better things to do than run around at night fighting bloodsucking monsters," Ranma reasoned, slowly raising his pistol to aim at Ran, "but I wanted to save and protect people, you know? I like doing it. So here I am."

Ran snorted savagely, and Ranma took a step back as black lightning started arcing around the vampire lord. "A simple answer from a simple creature. And this, THIS is what we struggle to overcome? This is what bars us from greatness? You pitiful insect!"

The lightning coalesced into half a dozen spheres of throbbing darkness, and Ran thrust a hand out at his human foe, holding Sailor Mars in one arm. "I may have been a fool... but if fate will have me, then I will do its bidding! If this is the only way, I will water the ground with your blood!"

Kimiko promptly winced, and started sweating anxiously.

"Tonight may not be the hour of your doom, but it approaches quickly, mortal," Ran intoned, great lines of dark magic spreading below him spontaneously to create a circle of arcane runes, "you shall stare into the flames, and they shall consume you."

With a mental command, the lightning spheres bolted forward, screaming toward Ranma even as the magic circle below the midians flared to life.

Ranma suddenly dashed forward, though Ran's view of him was promptly obscured by the energy blasts.

"You're not going anywhere!" The pigtailed man shouted, and Ran snarled as his foe appeared above in a blue blur, leaping down atop the vampires even as explosions of black magic rocked the adjacent building.

"Soon, human," Ran hissed under his breath, the teleportation spell taking effect, "but not tonight."

* * *

"Hit it! Hit it now!"

Sailor Jupiter nodded and hopped onto the hood of a small car, electricity dancing between her hands. "Supreme thunder!"

On the other side of the abomination, Sailor Mercury rolled out behind a truck. "Shine aqua illusion!"

The massive undead beast hesitated for a moment, and then shook mightily as both attacks crashed into it, covering one half of the monster in ice as lightning surged through the other half.

"Guoooooh..." _Crunch!_ The abomination promptly shouldered forward again, shattering the ice that had tried and failed to impede its movement.

"My turn!" Venus shouted, standing up just a few meters in front of the massive ghoul. "Venus cresce-YEEP!" The blonde ducked in panic as the abomination casually smashed its claw into a car, sending the vehicle flying right over Venus' head.

A moment later, a sack of flesh on its back seemed to inflate, and Venus yelped again before dashing away.

_Sploorch!_ A stream of acid was sprayed in a dense fan in front of the abomination, and the creature was briefly obscured behind a curtain of thick smoke as the chemicals went to work on the rapidly vanishing cover offered by the sales lot.

Asuka bit her lip as she watched Venus. "This is taking longer than I'd like... I can only assume that Saotome couldn't take out Miss Anorexia by himself. I just hope he's okay..."

Mercury ducked in next to her, frowning. "I'm not sure, but I think it's targeting Sailor Venus on purpose. I'm pretty sure it knows that her attacks are more dangerous to it than mine or Jupiter's." Ice and electricity only seemed to slow the abomination, and sometimes didn't even draw its attention away from throwing something at the Senshi of love. "On the plus side, it either doesn't know about Moon or doesn't care."

_Sploorch!_ Asuka groaned as another truck collapsed into toxic steam and pools of bubbling chemicals. "Hey, what's with that thing on its back?" She asked suddenly.

Mercury activated her visor again and opened up the Mercury computer. "That sack is one of the glands that feeds the acid cannon; the acid it ultimately fires at us is far too powerful to be stored safely within any biological construct, so it keeps the primary compound in that bladder, and then the main catalysts are added in the arm cannon."

Asuka digested that information for a moment. "I see. All right, then." Turning away from her cousin, the police captain holstered her pistol, and then sprinted away from the battle taking place.

_Crunch!_ The abomination clamped onto the jagged remnants of a car, and then swung it clumsily across the lot, missing Sailor Mercury by just a meter and sending the hunk of metal bouncing across the pavement behind Asuka.

"ASUKA!!" Mercury screamed suddenly, "Look out!"

The blue haired girl immediately turned and grabbed onto the approaching wreckage, lifting her feet off the ground and allowing the jagged mess of steel to carry her rather than smash into her.

After a few seconds of shaky riding, the remaining momentum of the wreckage dissipated, and Asuka hopped off of the makeshift projectile before landing painfully next to Cyber Moon.

She hissed as she crawled next to the disabled cyborg, fighting the urge to rub at her wounds; in order to get a sufficient grip on the debris, she'd had to hold herself much closer than anyone should to a hunk of uneven, sharp-edged metal recently bathed in toxic chemicals. Asuka could only hope that the wounds were less severe than they felt, as she didn't have the time to take care of them immediately.

"Tsukino, how are you doing?" She gasped out.

Cyber Moon sniffled, her eyes big and dewey. "I can't feel my legs!" She whined, droplets hanging from the corners of her eyes.

Asuka sweatdropped. "Well, from what I can tell, you're better off that way. Listen, remember those weapons I gave you before we left? What'd you do with them?"

Usagi blinked, snapping out of her depression. "I put them in those hatches in my midriff. Why? Are you out of bullets?"

"Not quite. Open up for me, would you?"

Jupiter flung her arms forward as she leapt out into the open, lightning coalescing into a sphere between her hands. "Sparkling wide pressure!"

_BWAM!_ The energy bolt slammed into the abomination's arm, sending thick arcs of electricity surging up and down its bicep.

"Nuuhhhn..." the massive ghoul, instead of discharging another burst of acid, leaned to one side and then raised its leg as high as it could above the ground.

_SLAM!!_ The concrete underfoot buckled instantly as the abomination brought its metal-plated foot down onto the asphalt, and Jupiter gaped in surprise as the ground started cracking and bursting apart in a line headed directly toward her.

"What? Whoa!" She started running after a moment's hesitation, and managed to dive clear just before the ground she had been standing on exploded outward, as if a land mine had been detonated on top of it.

"Jupiter! You okay?" Sailor Venus asked as the taller girl scrambled over next to her, hiding behind the corner of the office building.

"Yeah, it's okay, it missed," the thunder Senshi mumbled, "but this isn't getting us anywhere! We need a new strategy!"

"I'm working on it!" Asuka suddenly shouted, and both Senshi turned to watch as the police captain sprinted across the lot, jumping over pits of acid as she clutched a cylinder in her hand.

"Hrrhhhhn..." the abomination started stepping toward the human running past it, and then turned back around as Sailor Mercury started playing notes on a harp of water.

"Aqua rhapsody!" The genius Senshi shouted, launching a stream of water at the undead creation.

Jupiter clicked her tongue as Asuka fell in next to her. "Well, I don't think it did much damage, but maybe it'll help the smell."

Asuka took a few heavy breaths, and then held out her free hand to Jupiter. "Your gloves... give me one of them."

The taller girl blinked. "What? My gloves? What about-"

"Look, I don't have time to explain; just give me a glove, all right?" the police captain demanded.

Jupiter frowned, but started tugging on the edge of her glove. "It's not a big deal or anything, but I'm not even sure they come off."

"Sure they do," Venus said immediately, "it takes a little work, but you can take off the whole uniform by hand."

Asuka and Jupiter both froze and stared at the blonde Senshi silently.

Venus blinked at the sudden attention, and then flushed. "What?!"

"Never mind, I don't wanna know," Jupiter mumbled, successfully stripping off her glove and handing it to Asuka.

"Excellent." The police captain tugged the garment on over her hand, frustrated as it seemed to almost resist being put on. "Come on, already... stupid senseless magic nonse-"

"Look out!" Mercury suddenly shouted. "The acid!"

_Sploorch!_ The three women all dashed away as a stream of yellow goo splashed into the wall of the office building, devouring the concrete and metal almost instantly.

Sailor Jupiter tucked into a roll, and shook her head as she stood back up. "Okay, so..." her eyes widened as she saw Asuka, who was jumping over an acid pool and charging straight TOWARD the abomination, which Jupiter was fairly certain no sane human being should ever contemplate.

"Hey! Takami-san, what are you doing?" She screamed, Venus doing a double-take behind her.

"I told you," Asuka shouted as the abomination groaned and stepped toward her, "I don't have time to explain it right now!"

The undead monster swung high, and Asuka dove low, hitting the ground on her side and rolling between the creature's legs.

Cursing under her breath at the irritation caused to her many burning lacerations, she pushed herself up, and then leapt onto the abomination's back, the thick stitches and metal plates making easy handholds.

"She's gone oranges!" Sailor Venus mumbled, starting to summon an attack.

"Wait! If you shoot now, you might hit her!" Jupiter warned.

"Unooohn..." the abomination stomped about restlessly, its arms utterly inadequate to reach behind it to remove the annoyance climbing on its back.

Asuka reached the monster's shoulders, and then found a solid foothold so that she could use both her arms, as one - the one protected by Jupiter's glove - was still clutching the cylinder she had received from Cyber Moon.

_Shluk!_ Using her combat knife, she sliced open the pulsating acid gland, whipping her head away at the powerful burning stench that was released. Then the police captain bit onto the pin attached to the cylinder in her hand, and then shoved the incendiary grenade deep into the abomination's chemical supply.

"Disgusting," Asuka mumbled, nearly gagging as she jumped off of the monster's back and landed on the ground behind it.

"Gyoooorrrg..." the undead beast lumbered about, raising its arms to attack as it saw one of its enemies walking away tiredly.

_Bwoof!_ There was a brief burst of light from the abomination's back, and the entire creature lurched backward for a moment as a fierce sizzling noise came from near its head.

The Senshi all stared slack-jawed as the massive ghoul shuddered mightily, its seams starting to glow hotly as small fires erupted at various points on its back and torso.

_PWOOF!_ A small gout of flames burst from its acid cannon, and the flesh of the weapon started to shrivel as parts of it broke open, dripping hot, glowing thermite onto the ground.

"Goog... Guhuh..." The abomination shuddered violently for a few moments, its armored head rocking back and forth in its convulsions. "PLOOOTH!" Finally, a wad of molten, lava-hot thermite burst out of the vision slot of its helmet, and the undead monstrosity slowly teetered over backward as the rest of its body burst into flames.

_Thwump!_

The Senshi were speechless as Asuka slowly staggered toward them, trying to wipe the cuts on her body clean with a shred torn from her dress.

"That... That was **awesome**," Sailor Jupiter mumbled.

"Well..." Venus hesitated, "it was **almost** as cool as Snake destroying the robot with a beer can. Almost."

"Yeah. Sure. Go me," Asuka said irritably as she dabbed at her leg. "I mean, it only took us, what, twenty minutes to secure an utterly unimportant area that's already been ravaged beyond repair? Thirty, maybe?Surely this is a great victory for team human. Would you like to go home to celebrate, or should we actually see about accomplishing something important tonight?"

The Senshi's sense of awe promptly evaporated, which was more or less her intention.

"Sheesh, all right," Jupiter mumbled as Mercury got to work on her computer, "we were just happy that we won, is all."

"Yeah, well, I'm a tactician. It's kind of my job to worry about these things," Asuka frowned deeply. "If Ranma didn't stop the bloodsuckers from taking Mars, or worse, he died in the attempt, then this fight was less than meaningless, and the vampires will soon have all the pieces they need to start their sad little rebellion."

Sailor Mercury gulped, and within a second all eyes were on her.

"I... uh..." her face was pale as she fought the dread she felt suffocating her like a noose. "I... can't find Mars' energy pattern anymore. She's... Somehow, she's outside of the Mercury computer's scanning area. Or... worse."

_Tak!_ Given all that had happened so far, the women could be forgiven for jumping into fighting stances at hearing something land nearby, and each one relaxed tremendously when they saw that Ranma had arrived.

Despite their relief, however, the obvious question hung in the air, especially given how Ranma's tuxedo was scorched, and he had a long cut along his arm.

"Saotome..." Asuka trailed off immediately as she caught his expression, although the pigtailed man wasn't meeting her eyes. His teeth and hands were clenched in frustration and anger, and she doubted it had anything to do with his injuries. "I see... thanks for coming back alive, then. That's all I could reasonably ask of you from that situation."

Suppressing her own anger and depression, she turned toward the Senshi. "Find a car that's still in one piece, and then break into the office and find me the keys. We have to get Tsukino back to HQ. After that... we need to get some rest." She clenched her hands into a fist. "Tomorrow is going to be a long and bloody day. I promise."

* * *

Elder vampires severely wounded: 2  
Ghouls obliterated: 46  
Vampires slow-roasted: 11  
Other undead dispatched: 6  
Evil plans come to fruition: 1

End Chapter 10


	11. Black Dawn

"A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war."  
- Herbert V. Prochnow

"How will we know when our military arsenal is "good enough"? When our weapons are so effective that wars aren't even worth fighting anymore. There's a reason that there have been no nuclear wars to date, and it's definitely not because people have stopped wanting to kill each other."  
- Seras Tuko

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh. This chapter features prominent Warhammer references, specifically of the Chaos variety. You don't need to know all the particulars to enjoy or understand the story, but a few hours on Wikipedia can explain quite a bit if you're curious.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **computer readouts**, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 11  
Black Dawn  
********************************************************************

Asuka desperately fought off a yawn as she typed away on her laptop, feeling her eyelids flicker.

With a deep, determined breath, she fell back into the task at hand, trying to think of the lives that possibly hung in the balance here.

'It's not just Hino that's in trouble. If the vampires mobilize fully, they can cripple the city's defenses easily. Thousands could be killed in the confusion, and every dead human equals a new undead enemy.'

She didn't really know if the vampires had either the resources, knowledge, or ingenuity to lay the city flat on its back with a single, wide-scale, coordinated attack, but she could think of dozens of terrible things that SHE would do were she in their place, and the results troubled her.

'Core's already on alert, stepping up night-time patrols and shuffling around the city leaders, but they won't take my warnings too seriously. Police protection outside of the DAPC is useless; no police officer without a handgun can or should confront a vampire. As far as offensive forces go, we have, well, us, the Senshi, Shikodan... and ironically enough, the Freedom's Angels.'

It surprised her as much as anyone when she'd picked up the reports of heavy firefights going down in dance clubs between FA cyborgs and some mysterious defenders that Core was unable to identify. Of course, had someone in the DAPC spent five minutes observing the ruins of the buildings, they would have identified the carbon dust that littered the blood-spattered wreckage as vampiric remains, but at the moment Asuka and her men had too much on their plate to be doing forensic investigations. Besides, Asuka was smart enough to put two and two together from the relative comfort of the DA's headquarters.

Of course, the police captain had little to no means of harnessing the power of the terrorists' cybernetic armies, to say nothing of the Angels' indiscriminate battle tactics making them a significant threat to the people that she was trying to save. Ultimately, Asuka wasn't sure whether it would be good to have her enemies fight her battles for her, and if their forces met then a cease-fire was out of the question. One more complication in a long line of problems.

Turning away from her computer, Asuka picked up her coffee cup reverently, the fumes helping to ward off the traces of sleep that tugged at her consciousness.

After taking a long gulp, she stared across the table at Ranma.

The pigtailed man hadn't had much sleep, that she could tell, but she wasn't sure she could blame him. Ranma considered protecting people to be his best and only talent, and he had let the enemy take Rei from right under his nose. Although Asuka was quite frustrated herself at being outmaneuvered by Mortis, she was rational and pragmatic enough to simply learn what she could from what went wrong, and put the failure aside to concentrate on the next task.

Ranma didn't think like that. To him, success was a responsibility, and failure was something that needed to be corrected and avenged. She imagined that being unable to save Sailor Mars was devastating to him.

Although none of that really explained why he kept disassembling and reassembling his gun while poking it repeatedly.

"How you holding up, Saotome?"

Ranma looked up in the concerned, weary eyes of his superior, and then looked back down at his gun, which looked entirely inert and non-sentient at the moment. "As well as I can. I'm a little restless, though. When I get my hands on that bastard Ran, I-"

"You'll follow orders and do what you must," Asuka said firmly, interrupting him. "And you know damn well that Ran may not be your opponent."

Ranma twitched, and the police captain saw his shoulders shake slightly as he clenched his teeth.

"I know you pretty well, Saotome," Asuka mumbled. "I know that you just want to win. But this is more important than that. We need to succeed. Winning is all well and good, but if you win and still fail, it means nothing. We saw that last night."

Ranma suddenly stood up, his hands planted flat against the table. "Then what am I supposed to do?!" He shouted. "Winning is all I'm good at! And... And if I can't even manage that..." he choked slightly as his arms started to shake.

"You'll manage that if you need to," Asuka said firmly, though she could tell she was losing her fragile grasp on Ranma's morale. "But for now the important thing is that we prepare for the next battle. Which means you need to rest."

"I can't just REST!" Ranma snarled, standing up straight. "People are dying out there! My FRIENDS are dying out there! I won't just-"

"I will tolerate a lot of crap from my officers, but heroic deaths aren't one of them!" Asuka interrupted sharply. "We all want to save Hino. We all want to save as many innocents as possible, but my responsibility is to complete the greater task at hand and keep you alive. I've already put you to far greater risk than is reasonable. I can't afford to lose you, Saotome."

Almost immediately after she said it, Asuka regretted the admission. Not only did Ranma disdain risk to his life, but the implication that he couldn't win was a further blow to his ego.

"But we can afford to leave Rei to the vampires?" Ranma groused, his hands balling into fists.

"You know very well that that's out of my control-"

_WHAM!_ A rather large concave dent formed in the table as Ranma slammed his fist down into it. "What I KNOW is that some bloodsucking monster has his hands and fangs all over Rei, and you want me to take a nap! If I'm just some kind of TOOL to you, then hurry up and use me!"

"Ranma-kun..." The tension promptly wilted as Usagi's voice came from behind the pair, and Ranma whirled around to see the cyborg girl standing in the doorway, her hands clasped together over her chest.

Tears were trickling down her cheeks, but Usagi smiled sadly as she walked up to Ranma. "Thank you. Thank you for all you've done."

Ranma flinched. "But... But they took her..."

"And I know that if you could have traded places with her, you would have. Even though you've known each other for such a short time." She sniffled briefly, and a robotic arm curled over her shoulder to wipe her eyes with a handkerchief, very nearly ruining the otherwise touching scene. "I'm sure Rei-chan knows it too... wherever she is..."

Ranma didn't really have a response to that, and lowered his head miserably to stare at the floor. "Still... I'm sorry. I'll do better next time. I won't lose."

Without any further warning from the girl, Usagi suddenly lurched forward, grabbing a surprised Ranma in a tight hug.

"It's... It's okay, Ranma-kun. You shouldn't have to bear so much on your own," the blonde insisted, sniffling as she buried her face into Ranma's shoulder.

"And more importantly, you're part of a team, Saotome," Asuka said from behind the pair, looking quite exasperated at the scene before her. "We all do our jobs to achieve the objective. What kind of leader would I be if I put everything on your shoulders?"

Ranma felt an uncomfortable tightening in his throat as raw emotion threatened to overcome his composure. For most of his life, people had simply thrown their responsibilities at him by the dozen, using Ranma as a solution for their own incompetence or apathy. The fact that he was more important to Asuka than solving the current crisis left him shaken.

"Hey, what's with all the mushy stuff going on? It's not even noon!" Snapped Snake as he trudged into the room, his hair in disarray and his uniform missing. Instead he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which made it much easier to see the bandages wrapped around much of his arms. Asuka guessed that his legs were fairly wrapped up as well simply from the brief explanation of his encounter with the German vampire.

Usagi quickly backed up away from Ranma, bowing sharply as her face flushed.

Minako followed behind the American, looking quite put out. "Well, since you won't let me change your bandages myself, at least let me check them! Tuko-san's obviously had enough rum to kill a normal man!"

Snake scowled as he landed heavily in a chair opposite Asuka. "He was sober enough to fix up Tsukino, wasn't he? If he could manage that, he has to be good for taking care of a few scratches like this."

"He was having a conversation with his foreceps," Makoto noted grimly as she entered behind Minako.

"My POINT is that you," Snake pointed at Minako, "are an untrained civilian who seems to think looking cute in a nurse's uniform qualifies you to practice medicine. Tuko is an educated and graduated doctor of healing, judged by the highest professional standards of competency and skill!"

Ranma blinked. "No he isn't."

"Not helping," Snake snapped at Ranma before turning back to Minako. "Anyhow, don't you have more important things to be worrying about than trying to get my shirt off?"

The blonde girl simply stared earnestly at him, a light flush on her face. "So... you think I'd look cute in a nurse's outfit?"

Snake turned wearily toward Asuka. "Can I just go home?"

The blue-haired woman shook her head. "Although normally I'd gladly send you home for a few days to recuperate, we've reached a critical point in our investigation against the vampires."

"So we're gonna strike back, right?" Makoto said, clenching her teeth as she pounded a fist into her palm. "We have to get Mars back!"

"Well, there's more than one problem with that," Asuka murmured. "Putting aside what - and who - we may have to fight when we track them down, we only have one half-decent lead on where Ran might be."

"So where's that?" Makoto asked, quickly sitting down next to Snake.

"It's Ran's penthouse," the police captain mumbled. "Which SOUNDS really juicy, but in all honesty it's the last place one would go to perform one's final preparations for the war against all humankind. We MIGHT be able to find clues there as to what Ran's been doing or where he's been hiding, but... it's pretty unlikely."

"Why's that?" Usagi asked.

"Because it's smack-dab in the middle of the city, surrounded by ordinary, non-suspicious humans. The kind that go to work in the daytime and haven't reported missing family members. Any major operation of his would have either attracted the attention of such a dense population center, or drawn enough young, stupid vampires there that they would have eventually used the locals to feed. Naturally we'll check it out anyway, but I have a strong suspicion that the real deal is going down elsewhere."

Asuka turned toward Snake. "Snake, I'm going to write up a legal order to have the entire building evacuated. What you do with it is your business."

Snake clasped his hands solemnly before him as he stared at the police captain with an expression of pure joy. "You are the wind beneath my wings."

"This still leaves us without a primary target," Asuka said wearily, rubbing her head. "We need to strike soon, and we need to strike hard, but where?"

"Ami-chan said that she couldn't detect Rei-chan for some reason, so I don't know..." Usagi trailed off sadly, lowering her head.

"Actually, I have a lead," Makoto said hesitantly. "Well, it's more like a possibility of a lead, but it's something. I've contacted Michiru and Haruka. They should be here soon."

"Oh! That's right! Neptune's mirror!" Usagi said suddenly, brightening considerably. "I'm sure that'll work! You're a genius, Mako-chan!"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Neptune? Oh! They're more of your Senshi?" She promptly recalled the registration records, fishing for the names. "If Michiru is Neptune, then Haruka would be... Uranus, correct?"

Makoto smiled nervously, nodding. "Well, yeah, hopefully it'll come through, but... well..." She cleared her throat, and then walked over to Usagi, poking the mechanical arm mounted on her shoulder. "I didn't realize it until today, but they've been kind of out of the loop, you know? I'm not sure how they're going to handle seeing you like this."

Usagi's expression flashed from shocked to worried to determined in the space of a second. "That... That doesn't matter," she said firmly. "Whatever problems they have with this body or anything else can wait until AFTER Rei-chan is safe."

Makoto blinked, obviously impressed. "Well... okay, yeah. You're right." Then she frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. "Although... I think something else is up with them. They seemed really upset when I called, though not at me. Also, they said it would be just them two."

"What? No Saturn or Pluto?" Minako asked, clearly distressed by the idea.

"Any help we can find is appreciated," Asuka cut in. "I've actually called in some extra guns as well. All we need is a location. If the other Senshi can provide it..."

"It's worth a shot!" Makoto said decisively, nodding. "So... ah... they're actually meeting us here, by the way. And... they don't know anything about you guys, so..."

Asuka nodded and stood up. "Understood. I'll be in the next room getting some rest if you need me. Saotome, you should find some place to do the same. Snake, I believe you have a building to knock down."

"Understood, Captain!" Snake shouted, saluting.

Minako smiled and inched closer to the American. "Can I go with you?"

"Can you obliterate a man at ten meters?" Snake asked, turning toward her.

"Yes!" The blonde said happily, nodding.

"I don't care. You still can't come," Snake said as he headed toward the garage.

Minako's face darkened, and Asuka sweatdropped.

"Uh... it's really not much of an insult that Snake doesn't want you around on a mission," the bluette explained awkwardly. "He's very picky about partners. He just felt that your skills probably wouldn't be needed."

"Hey, Yamazaki-kun!" Came Snake's voice from the next room, "Wanna help me blow up a building?"

"No! Why would I want to do that?" Replied Tiro, also within earshot of those in the briefing room.

"Too bad. Get a bigger gun and meet me in the garage."

"But I'm useless and unattractive!" The lecher whined.

"Whatever. Move it."

Asuka sweatdropped more as an aura of gloom enveloped Minako. "Well, I should move on out of here before your friends arrive..."

Ranma got up as Asuka left the room, staring hard at the reassembled Jackal in his hand. "Usagi-chan, do you know where Seras is?"

"Tuko-san was in the sub-levels with Ami-chan," Usagi responded. "Ami-chan was trying to scan the vampire for an energy type she could trace, and Tuko-san was playing quarters with a small lizard stuck in a beaker of chemicals. I think he was losing, too..."

The pigtailed man nodded and left, holding up the Jackal before him.

* * *

"Everything's back to normal. No teeth, no eye, no ominous writing on the sides, no green stuff..." Ranma mumbled to himself as he descended to the lower levels via elevator.

While he wasn't particularly upset at having his gun return to normal, he considered it something of a maintenance issue to find out if it was still possessed or not. After all, the corrupted nature of the gun tended to make the shots less accurate and sometimes, after firing, the weapon would shoot again without him pulling the trigger again. All of these things were pretty well compensated for with the incredibly powerful, ectoplasmic-charged bullets, but they were the sorts of things that could really mess him up in a sensitive situation if he wasn't expecting it.

Also, he wanted to know if he'd have to feed the damn thing.

'I hope it just eats meat, and not souls or anything,' he thought ruefully as he exited the elevator onto the containment floor. 'That'd be just my luck, having to carry ammo and human spirits around with me.'

Seras was, as expected, lying next to a metal crate and mumbling to himself while glaring at an empty glass bottle in his hand.

"Stupid midget iguana thinks he's all that," the scientist grumbled, his face red from both embarrassment and intoxication. "I'll show him... just 0.2 ounces of ammonia in his nutrient bath and then we'll see who laughs last!"

"Hey, Doc, you busy?" Ranma asked, walking up behind the medical officer and leaning over the crate he was sitting against.

Seras snorted. "As a matter of fact, I-"

"Great. Could you help me out with this gun for a minute? I think there's something wrong with it," Ranma said, pulling out the weapon and placing it on its side on top of the crate.

Seras looked annoyed as he glanced up at the pigtailed man. "Why are you coming to me with this? I'm not an expert on guns or weapons."

"I figure if you're drunk enough, I can convince you that you are," Ranma reasoned. "Also, you're the only person I know who's both stupid enough to believe what happened to me and smart enough to possibly help me with it."

"Those are both excellent points, and by that I mean I wasn't really listening," Seras said, struggling to his feet and then planting his hands on the top of the crate, staring down at the Jackal. "So, what's the problem?"

"My gun doesn't seem to be possessed," Ranma said, rubbing his chin. "It was possessed before, and now it's not. I'd like to know why."

"Gun's possessed the what now?"

Ranma sighed. "I was fighting a vampire last night, and she possessed my gun to try and turn it on me. The Jackal grew teeth and an eye, and started snarling at me. But then I beat it up, and from then on out it pretty much did what it was supposed to. But now the gun seems to be back to normal."

Seras frowned. "You know, if I wasn't drunk, I'd say you were just messing with me."

"But you are, so..."

The sloshed scientist shrugged. "Still, I don't know anything about ghosts..."

"Sure you do," Ranma lied.

"Oh. Right," Seras agreed immediately. "Well, we can rule out the ghost suddenly vanishing or leaving. You see, possessing something takes a great deal of energy, so your typical ghost wouldn't just corrupt your gun and then take off at the first opportunity. Also, ghosts don't just spontaneously depart to the afterlife; either something banishes them, or whatever was tying them to the mortal plane is resolved. So I'm pretty sure the ghost is still in the Jackal, just dormant."

"Dormant?" Ranma asked.

"Yeah. Ghosts only have so much energy to expend, just like anything else. It probably can't manifest during the daytime as a result." Seras nodded to himself. "Ghosts usually receive energy either from a psychic focus or some object or place of great supernatural power. Barring that, a ghost not tied to a special location or object will receive energy from the moon, and as a result will not be able to manifest during the day."

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "The moon? Are you sure?"

"No, I just made that up," Seras said, his expression utterly serious. "But you don't have any better explanations, do you?"

"I guess not," Ranma admitted, picking up his weapon and inspecting it closely as he pulled back the slide. "So you think it'll go all haunted again when night falls?"

"I think you're crazy is what I think," Seras clarified. "But sure, why not?"

"Okay. Thanks," Ranma said earnestly. Although Seras had been less helpful than Ranma had hoped - not that he had any reason to expect better - it at least provided him with some ideas.

"So what's the progress on the vampire?" Ranma finally asked, holstering the Jackal.

Seras shrugged. "Captain's cousin's been sitting in front of it with that computer and yakking at it for going on a full hour now. Don't know what good it'll do; that bastard's as smug as ever. Keeps saying that he won't tell us a thing unless we give him another dose of your red stuff."

Ranma suppressed a sudden shudder. He hadn't really given it too much thought before, but now that he had been classified as a regular food supply for the vampires, the thought of people constantly draining his blood to drink it was quite unsettling.

Not that he'd say as much; compared to what he went through under the effects of the T-virus, sipping human blood wasn't all that bad.

"Damn that arrogant... filthy... stuck-up... argh!" Ranma and Seras glanced over to the side as Ami barged through the door into the main vault area, her face flushed with anger and the Mercury Computer tucked under her arm.

"Didn't go so well, huh?" Ranma asked.

"That filthy monster tricked me!" Ami snapped, scowling as she stalked by the pair of men. "And after I gave him the rest of the blood, too!"

"Wh-What?" Seras said, jerking to attention suddenly. "You did what?"

Ami flushed as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, he still claims he doesn't know where to find Ran, but he did offer me the location of a night club that turns people into vampires, and he said the vampires there would know more!"

Ranma blinked. "And?"

"AND, I cross-referenced the club name and location after I gave him the blood," she muttered ruefully. "The Dark Hearts club was the first to be leveled! And I get the feeling he knew it, too!"

As Ranma sweatdropped, Seras shook his head. "Look, whatever, forget about that. What do you mean you gave him 'the rest' of the blood?"

Ami winced. "Well... I thought that a bigger quantity would get him to tell us anything he'd been hiding... Saotome-san's blood seems to have genuinely addictive properties to vampires, so-"

"SO, you decided to give him **all** of it?" Seras snapped, scowling. "You moron! Do you have any idea how valuable that blood is?"

Ami flinched back, confused. "Wh-What? Why? Because the vampires-"

"Forget the vampires!" Seras shouted, causing the girl to flinch again. "Saotome's blood happens to be the breeding grounds for one of the most powerful and capable microorganisms known to modern science! His blood is the cure for the most devastating man-made biotoxin on the planet! His blood can create medicines to restore sensitive tissues instantaneously! THIS MAN'S BLOOD CAN CURE CANCER, WOMAN!"

Ami fell backwards onto her rear, completely overwhelmed. "Uh... um... r-really? But then, why did you say I could feed it to the vampire?"

"I said you could feed **a dose** to the vampire!" Seras shouted.

"But then, why did you give me the entire case of blood bags?" Ami asked desperately.

"Because I've had enough whisky to put down an elephant, nitwit!" The scientist ranted. "Why did you give that overgrown parasite the whole freakin' case?"

"Hey! One of my best friends is in danger, here!" Ami shouted back, starting to get angry herself. "You think I'm going to throw away a chance to save her to preserve a few blood samples?"

"T-virus! Cure! Medicine! CANCER!" Seras screamed back.

"All right, all right! Knock it off!" Ranma finally said, pulling back Seras before the drunkard can continue. "Look, she made a mistake, all right? And not half as bad as some of the one's YOU'VE made. Just get off her back," the pigtailed man demanded as Seras and Ami both fumed silently. "Besides, you can always get more blood, right?"

"Actually, you seem to be spilling most of it in combat nowadays," Seras said ruefully. "The Captain says I can't draw any more blood until this vampire thing has blown over. Says she needs you sharp and whatnot," the scientist mumbled.

"Yeah, well, that's just how it is," Ranma mumbled back, inwardly glad that Asuka was so considerate. Involuntary blood loss was a common hazard for Ranma, but he found the voluntary kind to be unsettling and uncomfortable, and it had a definite effect on his reflexes. "I'm sure things'll work out."

Ami sighed and sat on a crate, massaging her head. "I just hate being so **helpless**. I keep thinking that there must be some piece of evidence I didn't consider, or some piece of the puzzle that I'm just not seeing..."

"Well, I doubt you're going to get anywhere messing with that jerk in the cage," Ranma said, jabbing a thumb in the general direction of said vampire. "But apparently your friends have some sort of plan involving a mirror or something. They're upstairs."

Ami nodded unenthusiastically. "It's far from perfect, but it looks like it's the best lead we have. Thank you, Saotome-san."

Ranma and Seras watched the bluette enter the elevator, and then Seras fidgeted for a moment once she was gone.

"So... how about just a few-"

"Nope, sorry," Ranma said immediately. "No blood. Gotta save it for the fights."

"Oh, come on!" Seras complained. "What about the numerous hypothetical children that could be saved from horrible diseases?"

"That guilt trip would work on me if it weren't for all the hypothetical children that could be EATEN ALIVE in the next couple days," Ranma deadpanned.

Seras fumed. "So, what? Being food is worse than dying of disease? At least they're serving an ecological purpose!"

"There is something wrong with you, you know that?"

* * *

Far away from DAPC headquarters, on the outlying perimeter of an abandoned warehouse, a pair of men conversed quietly while the sea air whipped their long cloaks about their feet.

Both men were far more heavily clothed than the weather called for, even taking into account the frigid wind; wrapped in thick, dark cloaks and cowls that hid everything but their eyes, the two were incredibly suspicious, but both had powers that necessitated convenience over discretion.

For Ran, the reasoning was simple; he could walk out in the open during the daytime, but frankly, he hated it. He should have been at home in the coffin under his bed at the moment, but recent events had been very demanding, and as such sleep would have to wait.

The Prophet had... other reasons for covering himself up. Ran suspected that the strange man would have been far more suspicious with his body moderately exposed than he was wrapped up like some sort of fantasy warlock.

"The preparations are taking much longer than anticipated," Ran groused, stifling a yawn. "Our new weapon has been... VERY reluctant to take on her new role."

The Prophet nodded slowly. "You should... expect as much... it will... not be easy... but... she... will fight."

"Yes. Ultimately, she will do as I will it. However, her attitude has me worried."

"About what... Master?" The Prophet asked, his head leaning slightly to one side.

"It's the DAPC," Ran groused, turning away from the other man. "It may happen that we'll have to fight both the blasted humans and those Senshi brats when they try to get Mars back. With that sort of power and expertise arrayed against us, I fear that only the might of me and my remaining elder circle will be able to triumph." He pursed his lips. "I see little chance for Mars to destroy them all herself, particularly if she's reluctant to fight."

The Prophet simply nodded again. "As a... freshly turned... nosferatu... she does... not impress... I imagine," he rasped. "However... there are... ways... to increase... her power..."

Ran raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

"It is not... from me... that the knowledge comes... You... vampire prince... you have... the power... to gift your servant... with the strength... she requires..."

Ran scowled. "Oh. That. Yes, I suppose I could lend her my own might, but if I am weakened, how am I to triumph in the engagements to come? Do you really think a strengthened Mars could compensate for my own weakness?"

The cloth shielding the Prophet's mouth wrinkled in such a way that Ran imagined the man smiling. "I promise you... you will be... **surprised**... by the results..."

Ran mulled it over for hardly two seconds before he nodded. All the trouble he had gone through to take Mars had been on the Prophet's word in the first place; it wouldn't have made much sense to start distrusting the man now. "Very well. With any luck, I'll be able to teach the girl a bit before we have to fight the DAPC again. That and rest up myself. What else is there?"

"Tonight... will be... a pivotal point... in your campaign..." the Prophet mumbled, pointing a ravaged finger toward the warehouse they stood in front of. "With your... power... call all... the midians in Tokyo... to this... point. They are... to gather... And... at that point... the dawn... of the future... a future... wreathed in darkness... shall be born..."

Ran nodded, now looking far more pleased. "It is as you say, then." He began to step toward the building, but stopped and turned around. "And what of you, Prophet?"

"Hmmm?" The strange man gave Ran a questioning look.

"You have aided us considerably in this task, and now we stand at the apex of a new era," Ran explained. "The rewards for ushering in the new rulers of this world should be considerable, no? I was wondering what you desired for your efforts. It is not beyond my power to grant you unlife, no matter how... impure you may be."

The Prophet chuckled deeply; a throaty, phlegm-choked noise that made Ran want to vomit. "I am... but a messenger... a tool... of the fates... to guide those... that have been chosen..." He shook his head. "My life... is not my own... my desires... are but shadows... before the will... that speaks to me..." The ever-present crystal sphere floated in a sudden whirlwind all about him. "I require... no rewards... I am party... to something... much greater than... the happenings... of this realm..."

Ran frowned. "Oh? Like what?"

The Prophet shook his head again. "Time... is of the essence... You must hurry..."

"Right, right," Ran mumbled, walking toward the warehouse. He was interested in the Prophet's powers and motivations, but didn't really feel it was important at this juncture. After all, the happenings of this realm were his paramount concern as of the moment.

The warehouse they stood in front of was one of a great number of facilities that had been abandoned by its owners in the financial chaos surrounding the city as of late. While Tokyo had extensive experience in surviving and rebuilding after major catastrophes, having so many people murdered in such a small time span still wreaked havoc with the local businesses, and some properties simply fell through the cracks.

This particular warehouse had still been maintained by a few union workers when the Prophet had pointed it out, but that hadn't been a problem. Ran had even put the ghouls that resulted to good use, and one of the poor undead men opened the door awkwardly as the vampire lord stepped into the building.

"You. Find something to cover those windows," Ran said to the other ghoul that was stumbling about inside the building, "sunlight disrupts my concentration."

The ghoul, devoid of any considerable intelligence, promptly plastered its body as best it could over the panel of glass that was allowing the warm sunlight to reach its master's body.

Ran took a deep breath, and an aura of white light began to build around him.

After a few seconds, loose objects in the warehouse began to vibrate rapidly, and a crate sitting next to the nosferatu slowly rose into the air, shifted by the catastrophic buildup in psychic power.

After a few more seconds, Ran's body suddenly flashed brightly, and then the aura faded.

"It is done," Ran said simply as he stepped out of the building and passed by the Prophet. "Every vampire in the country should have heard that call, and should begin arriving immediately."

"Excellent..." the Prophet rasped. "And then... with Mars as your general..."

"I shall lay waste to the pitiful 'masters' of this city," Ran snarled, baring his fangs, "and take my place as this land's rightful ruler, sovereign over the masters of the undead!"

"Yessss..." the Prophet hissed, stepping into the warehouse as Ran left in the opposite direction, looking extremely pleased. "So many possibilities... open to you now..." Again, the cloth over his mouth wrinkled. "Such a shame..."

* * *

"GWAH!" Junko promptly bolted upright in bed, throwing the covers off of herself. "Ow! My head!"

As the redhead massaged her skull, the covers shifted again, and a well-built man in his thirties stirred from his sleep.

"What's the matter? Hangover?" He couldn't imagine that, as Junko hadn't drunk heavily at all the previous night; their lengthy sexual encounter hadn't required much intoxication of either of them, and Junko in particular preferred making love sober.

The woman in question clenched her teeth as she squeezed her eyes shut. "No, just a psychic pulse."

The man blinked. "A what?"

Junko cracked one eye open, waiting for her mind to adjust to her sudden state of alertness and organize her thoughts. 'Wait... how did I know that?'

Honestly, she couldn't say why she knew the rapidly fading pain in the back of her mind had been a surge of psychic energy, but like most aspects of her powers, she was willing to simply take the knowledge for granted.

'What was it? I got a... strange feeling from it... a message?'

Her eyes widened. "Vampires!"

Her current paramour raised an eyebrow. "Vampires? Are you feeling okay?"

"Not really, no," Junko admitted, rolling out of bed and pulling out her underwear drawer. "I need to get to work."

"Eh? You have a gig in the middle of the afternoon?"

Junko raised an eyebrow as she slipped on her panties and started putting on her brassiere. "I'm a cop, hon. My 'gig' runs pretty much all day."

The man in her bed looked shocked. "What? You're... You're a cop? Seriously?"

"Well, duh," the redhead deadpanned as she started putting on her street clothes. "Why did you think I was wearing a police uniform?"

He sweatdropped. "Well... sure, you were in uniform... but then you crashed our bachelor party and started undressing, so..."

"Yeah, okay. Fine. GET OUT," Junko snapped, a vein popping up on her head. She didn't find it particularly offensive to be mistaken for a stripper, but since apparently the mistake was made, she WAS annoyed that no one had offered tips.

As the stranger rapidly gathered his clothes and made to leave, Junko slipped on her jacket and found her badge on her dresser.

'What does it mean? I've never felt anything like this before, not even when I was around the vampires attacking us. And my psychic powers should be suppressed, too! This is really bad. I have to warn the others...'

With a quick run of the brush through her hair, and a cursory search of her bedroom to make sure what's-his-face didn't leave anything behind, the amorous officer was out the door and on her way to headquarters.

* * *

While Junko was busy starting her day almost four hours late, other forces were already gathering at DAPC headquarters, preparing for the storm that was rapidly brewing.

Haruka's face was grim as she squeezed Michiru's hand, gazing up at the heavily damaged government building.

"Jeez, what happened here? It looks like someone bombed out this place," the blonde mumbled, looking around the parking lot.

"I still think it's extremely suspicious that they're meeting here," Michiru mumbled. "Why a police station? It's hardly the best place to have an important secret meeting."

Haruka shrugged as she led the pair up the front steps. "I'm sure they have their reasons. Then again, if they don't, we'll just move everything somewhere else. Don't stress over it."

Michiru sighed and nodded weakly. "I know. I just... I really wish we had approached the Inners sooner about Hotaru-chan. Before something like this had forced them to come to us."

"I know, I know," Haruka groused as she entered the building, "we talked about this before. We were hoping it was just some mundane thing. You know, a girl gets lost in the mountains, and the search teams do their thing. And how were we supposed to expect that Setsuna would go completely AWOL on us?"

Michiru glanced around the lobby, frowning as she realized no one was there. "I don't like this, Haruka... what do you think happened to Hino-san?"

Before the blonde could answer her lover, a door to the side of the lobby opened, and both of the Outers' eyes locked onto Makoto as she gestured them into the next room.

"Thanks for coming, you guys," Makoto said earnestly, bowing slightly. "We know that it's sudden, and there's a lot to explain, but we're really in a bind, here."

"Yeah, about that," Haruka began, holding tightly onto Michiru's hand while remaining rooted to the spot, "are there any cops in this headquarters? It looks abandoned."

"Oh, there are," Makoto said, nodding, "but we can talk in private without having to worry about them."

"How can you be sure of that?" Michiru asked, her brow creasing. "Wouldn't it be safer to talk somewhere else?"

Makoto pursed her lips. "Well... it's difficult to explain, but secrecy really isn't a high priority right now..."

The Outher Senshi both raised their eyebrows.

"Look, just come in and sit down, please!" Makoto said, feeling her temper get the better of her.

Haruka sighed, but finally moved to comply with the brunette. "All right, fine. I suppose we have too much on our plate as it is; lead on."

Makoto nodded gratefully, and the two Outer Senshi reluctantly followed her into the briefing room.

Haruka was satisfied to see that there were no surprises within the room; all the Inner Senshi were there save Rei, all looking grim-faced and impatient. Michiru took a cursory glance around the room, and was pleased to find that the only security camera in the room was unplugged and turned around toward the corner of the wall. Although she imagined that plenty of people could have been spying on them in other ways, seeing the most obvious forms of observation foiled was comforting.

"Haruka-chan, Michiru-chan, thank you for coming," Usagi said rather sternly. She had meant to sound cheerful at their presence, but honestly the situation, coupled with the inevitable conversations that were soon to ensue, sapped even her considerable Happy Reserves.

Haruka sighed as she and Michiru sat down. "All right everyone. I know you have a lot to tell us, but before you do, we have something we have to tell you."

Michiru's lips pressed into a thin line, and she squeezed her lover's hand tighter.

"Hotaru-chan is missing," Haruka continued, ignoring the expected double-take from the others. "She was on a class trip going to the mountains, and she got separated from her group. They're still searching for her, but we've had no good news so far."

"A-Are you serious?" Minako asked, standing up. "When did this happen? Why didn't we hear about it?"

"This happened a few days ago," Michiru mumbled, "or at least, that's when we were informed. As for why we didn't contact you immediately, it didn't really occur to us. First we contacted the search parties that are still looking for her, then we looked into the Aqua Mirror, and finally we actually went there ourselves and spent a full day combing the mountain on foot. Nothing."

Ami was already on her computer, typing away rapidly. "I can see how a manual search could fail, and I'm not picking anything up on my computer... but the Deep Aqua mirror shouldn't be so easy to foil. Even if something had happened to her, it should have given some sort of indication..."

Michiru clenched her teeth as she stared down into her lap. "I... I don't know. It just didn't work! I can't explain it, and I don't know what to do!"

Haruka sighed wearily, hoping that her lover could stave off tears for the purposes of this meeting. "In related news, we haven't seen Setsuna in about a week now. And I don't mind saying that she'd better be the in the heat of battle against some sort of Hell-spawned eldritch horror right now, because if I find out that she was watching from a safe place while Hotaru-chan disappeared for the 'sake of the timeline' or some bullshit reason like that, I'm going to shove that stupid-looking key so far up her ass that-"

* * *

Meanwhile, at the Gates of Time...

"Dead Scream!" Pluto shouted, sending another ball of unstable temporal energies into the swarm of gibbering, multicolored creatures that continued to lurch toward her.

The energy bolt tore through the nightmarish abominations, each one releasing a high-pitched wail as its essence was undone and returned to the Empyrean that spawned it.

"HEEEEEEOOOOOUGH..." As more of the brilliant, rainbow-colored flames slowly started to appear all around her, a great tentacle with dry, cracking skin of a bright red emerged from the swirling portal that had replaced the Gates of Time proper.

"Back! Back, daemon!" Pluto snapped as the revolting appendage crept toward her, arcane lightning crawling up the length of the tendril.

_Thwack! Bzrt!_ The tentacle flinched away as the Garnet Rod smashed into its tip in an explosion of iridescent energies.

"Damn it, there's no end to them!" The Time Guardian growled as the scattered flames withered away into rapidly expanding balls of multi-hued flesh.

"It doesn't matter how many of you there are!" She declared defiantly. "You will leave this place, either of your own feeble will, or as a misaligned temporal singularity! Dead Scream!"

* * *

"-surgery just to get dressed in the morning!" Haruka finally finished, her face red as her chest heaved with wrathful energy.

Everyone else in the room gaped at Haruka, their faced either a bright red or pale white at some of the imagery the racer had used.

"Well... uh... never thought I'd say this, but if that's the case, I certainly hope she's in danger," Makoto mumbled.

"Yes. Well," Ami began, coughing lightly as the color returned to her face. "This is extremely troubling, but unfortunately, Rei-chan's situation is dire enough that we can't delay her rescue to help search for Hotaru-chan."

Haruka frowned as she rested her cheek against her fist. "Really. So what happened to Hino?"

"She was snatched by vampires last night," Minako said tactlessly.

_Thwump!_ Haruka's cheek slipped off of her fist, and her head slammed against the table. "Ow! Sonuva..."

"V-Vampires?" Michiru asked incredulously. "You mean-"

"Vampires. Yes. Suck blood, turn into bats, hate garlic, etc. etc. Those vampires," Makoto said straightforwardly. "We've been having some trouble with them recently. They've been cleaning the streets at night, so we attacked one of their leaders and Rei-chan attacked one of their clubs, I guess. Anyway, long story short, last night they got her and took her away somewhere, and now we need to find her."

"You... were fighting vampires?" Haruka asked as she rubbed her head.

"Well... it's not so much WE were fighting them," Ami explained awkwardly. "It's more like we found out that the police that operate here were fighting them, and we wanted to help."

"Waitaminute. You're telling me that this isn't even our fight?" Haruka asked.

"That's not true!" Usagi blurted, standing up suddenly. "Even before Rei-chan was taken, these monsters were killing and feeding on innocent people, trying to increase their numbers! Eventually they were even going to go to war against humankind!"

"All right, all right, fine. I get it," Haruka mumbled, rubbing her head. "You have a point. So vampires have Hino, and we need to go save her. Fine. What are we waiting for?"

"Well..." Makoto, Minako, and Ami all glanced at Usagi, who swallowed nervously and sat back down.

"Well, there is... you know... 'other stuff' that we should probably get out in the open," Usagi hedged, fidgeting with her fingers. "Nothing as important as Rei-chan, just a few little details that you probably missed..."

"Details?" Michiru repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. Little things like people being turned into cyborgs and police departments that know all about us," Usagi said quickly, waving her hand lightly as if to brush off the topics. "Anyway, we should hurry up and rescue Rei-chan before-"

"Stop." Haruka demanded, holding up a palm. "I'm going to let the cyborg thing pass, because frankly, I can't really imagine what you're talking about. But what's this about police knowing all about you?"

"No, not 'us' as in the Inner Senshi," Minako clarified, much to the others' chagrin, "she meant 'us' as in the Senshi. They know all about you, too."

Seeing the older women gape, Usagi quickly started waving her arms about defensively. "Wait! Before you get upset, this is like, ninety percent Pluto's fault! She said it was okay to trust the DAPC and put in your registration paperwork and everything!"

"Are you serious?" Haruka growled, balling her hand into a fist and slamming it on the table. "So, what, we're working with the government now? What are we, civil servants?"

"Oh! Right!" Venus suddenly clapped her hands together as she remembered something, and then stood up and left the room.

"It's not as complicated as all that," Ami assured Haruka gently. "It's just a matter of accountability. It's difficult for the police to keep the peace if they simply ignore vigilantes running amok."

"Running amok? We're saving people!" Haruka protested.

Ami thought about pointing out that the Outer Senshi should've been the last people to protest that their actions were entirely benign and heroic, but held her tongue. It wouldn't do any good to provoke Haruka at this juncture. "And occasionally people get hurt and buildings get leveled in the process. Look, I'm not saying it's completely fair or harmless, and we certainly do not answer to the government. But it's already been done - without ANY of our permissions - and there's not much we can do about it."

"Oh really?" Haruka said, raising an eyebrow. "What about memory wipes?"

"You're going to brainwash my boss?" Usagi asked, horrified.

Ami promptly slapped herself in the forehead.

"Your BOSS?" Haruka parroted as Michiru gaped at the admission, stunned.

"Uh... yeah. Right. Also, I work for the DAPC now," Usagi said meekly, rubbing the back of her head as she stuck out her tongue. "So actually, I guess I answer to the government. But the rest of you don't have to!"

"YOU'RE THE PRINCESS!" Haruka protested, throwing her hands up.

"Well, until I find someone to pay me for being royalty, I need a job like everyone else," Usagi explained, shrugging. "Things just sort of worked out this way."

As the two older women stared incredulously, Usagi decided to simply forge ahead and get everything on the table. "Oh! Also, I'm part machine now. Look! I have Pez!"

Usagi happily snapped her wrist up, and a tiny candy tablet bounced out onto the table.

_Whump!_ Haruka fell back down into her chair heavily, her face pale as she clutched the side of her head. "What... how did... but... not supposed to... can't..."

Michiru was about to say something to complement Haruka's mumbling when the door on the side of the room suddenly opened, and Minako stepped back in holding a small stack of plastic cards.

"Here you go, guys! These are your registration cards!" Minako put the two for Sailor Uranus and Neptune in front of their respective owners, and the both of them stared down at the cards numbly. "Asuka-chan says to be careful not to lose these! If you don't have one, she can't punish her men for shooting you!"

Haruka twitched violently, staring down at the tiny card as she ground her teeth together.

"Mina-chan, please, you need to learn how to read a situation," Makoto said wearily.

"Oh! Right! Sorry!" Minako said, adopting a serious expression. "So what did we decide to do about Rei-chan?"

"Hino isn't the one that needs help, here!" Haruka suddenly shouted, slamming a fist on the table again.

Minako blinked. "Are you sure? I know Rei-chan is no pushover, but-"

"That's not what I meant!" Haruka growled. "What the hell is going on here? People know our identity, we're fighting vampires on behalf of the government, and now the Princess is a Goddamn robot?!"

"I'm a cyborg, not a robot!" Usagi protested, frowning. Ami had insisted there was a difference, so she wanted to make sure there was no confusion.

Michiru finally spoke, her expression far more composed, but no happier than Haruka's. "I have to agree. It seems that you've all lost sight of what the Senshi are about. What we are supposed to be. To say nothing of the role we have to play in the near future. Compared to what you've just told us, Hino-san's capture is a mere inconvenience."

"I-Inconvenience?" Usagi sputtered, her body trembling.

"Sailor Mars isn't going to be the one to hold the fate of humanity in her hands," Haruka snapped. "While you were gallivanting around playing cops and robbers with B-movie horror monsters, did you ever stop to think about the future? The future we've all fought and sacrificed for?"

At that moment, Usagi experienced a flash of rage that would normally be referenced as "seeing red". However, due to her current bodily nature, it was a shining, icy blue that eclipsed her eyes as she slowly stood up from her chair.

_Clack!_

Everybody suddenly whirled around at the sound of the door to the briefing room opening, and much of the tension evaporated as a complete stranger walked into the room.

The man was huge, in terms of height and stature, and was wearing a thick, dirtied trench coat while carrying a massive bundle of some sort over his shoulder and a large, silvery crucifix around his neck. His thick black hair was in disarray, clearly unused to any sort of attention beyond those demanded by basic hygiene, and his gray eyes stared straight ahead as he walked up to the table.

_Thwump!_ The stranger dumped his package on the table, and then sat down behind it, immediately leaning back in his seat and staring dully at the ceiling.

Absolute silence dominated the room as the women all glanced at each other.

Finally, Minako cleared her throat and turned toward the man. "Uh... Hi?"

He turned toward her, stared expressionlessly into her eyes for roughly two seconds, and then went back to staring at the ceiling.

"Wait, let me try that again," Minako said with determination, visibly steeling herself to enter conversation with the foreigner once more. "Hi! We were kind of in the middle of a private discussion here! Who are you?"

The man turned toward her again, looking exactly as uninterested as before. "I am Shikodan Rayden. If I am intruding, I apologize. I was told to meet Captain Takami at this place."

Minako was about to go further and explain that they needed privacy, when suddenly Haruka interrupted.

"You know what? No. I don't even care if some stranger overhears anymore. I am SO beyond this." She turned toward Usagi again and pointed toward her. "You need to grow up and step out of this 'magical savior of love and justice' crap! You had a quarter of your life to play superhero and save people, and that's fine, but now is the real deal! You're a PRINCESS, Tsukino. That does not mean ponies and pretty dresses and lots of servants to clean up after you! That means you have decisions to make, people to lead, and a future to build! You have RESPONSIBILITIES, and it's about Goddamn time you woke up and realized that!"

Usagi trembled mightily as emotion once again washed over her. "And... what? Rei-chan isn't one of those responsibilities?"

"We're not saying that," Michiru interjected, though she was clearly far more uncomfortable with the strange man in the room than her lover. "We're not even saying that we shouldn't rescue Hino-san immediately. But without realizing it, you've let yourself be led to a point that will be very difficult to return from. Our goals, our future... there's a lot riding on your shoulders, and you've clearly forgotten that. We aren't guardians of Japan or even Tokyo. We're guardians of the Silver Millennium, of Crystal Tokyo, and a destiny that encompasses the entire planet. You can't let yourself throw that aside so easily."

Usagi stared down at the table in front of her, unsure what to say. Normally at times like these, she would call upon some inner strength to suddenly stand up straight and say something queenly, but this time she was at a complete loss for words; the only thing she could think of was Rei, and concern for one of her dearest friends had reduced Haruka and Michiru's stern reprimand to gibberish in her mind.

"If I may interject..." Rayden suddenly said, surprising everybody.

The Russian gave the others a stony stare as they all focused on him, and then he continued. "Keeping in mind that I do not know any of you or the particulars of your situation, I have some experience in matters of great responsibility and sacrifice."

As he spoke, Rayden broke eye contact with the women and slipped a pistol out of his coat, ignoring the girls' startled gasps.

"I have known a number of truly great men and women, and watched them rise to power only to fall from grace, becoming at one moment the most magnificent and the next the most wretched members of the human species." As he spoke mechanically, he started to break the handgun apart into pieces, setting them apart in a careful configuration in front of him.

"All people reach greatness from similar beginnings. It is that spark of innocence that drives them; their naive, wishful desires. Whether it be for family, country, humankind, or even the perfectly noble goal to improve oneself, they all shoulder their way through hardship to achieve magnificence."

The Senshi watched with rapt attention, practically mesmerized, as Rayden took out a cloth and some gun oil as he kept up his lecture. "Those that fall from such heights are not those who are weak or soft-hearted, but those who lose themselves to their responsibilities and ambitions. I have seen many a general needlessly sacrifice his own people to win a battle, simply because a general's job is to win battles, not to preserve lives. Too many I have seen that do what they must to reach a goal, only to realize far too late that the goal has long been forsaken on the altar of 'necessity' and 'duty'."

Rayden finished cleaning the gun parts arrayed before him, and then glanced to the side, meeting Usagi's eyes. "Do as you will. The responsibilities of great people are not to be taken lightly. But ensure that you do not lose sight of why you are fighting in the first place. Do not forget what it is you want to protect."

With that, the gunman started reassembling his weapon and went back to completely ignoring the strange young women in the room.

"Uh... I, uh..." Haruka slowly turned back toward Usagi, but was quickly cut off.

"Michiru!" Usagi suddenly barked, her face stern and determined. "Transform. We've wasted too much time already!"

"Wh-What? But-" The emerald-haired woman was silenced by an uncharacteristic glare from the ponytailed blonde.

"There is no 'but'," Usagi snapped. "We filled you in and you said your piece. We're all done there. Now it's time for you to do your part so we can go rescue Rei-chan."

"What about-" Haruka began desperately.

"Anything else can wait!" Usagi declared, crossing her arms over her chest. "What we're going to do RIGHT NOW is find Rei-chan, save her, and then annihilate any and all vampires we find along the way! THEN we're going to see about finding a way to locate Hotaru-chan! Do you have a PROBLEM with that, Uranus?"

Haruka flinched as Usagi stared down at her with narrowed eyes, and suddenly felt much, much smaller. "Well... no... not as such..."

"Well, you're just wasting our time then, aren't you?" Makoto interjected, smirking along with the rest of the Inner Senshi at the sudden change in atmosphere. "Neptune? We're waiting."

Michiru gulped and pointed none-to-discreetly at Rayden, who had finished reassembling his pistol and was now taking apart a submachine gun.

"Oh, relax. He's not even watching," Minako scoffed.

Sure enough, Rayden didn't so much as look up from his weapons during Neptune's entire transformation sequence, though he did lift his hand slightly above his eyes to block out some of the excess light.

"It figures that I'd end up fighting alongside blasted witches. I should have known better than to return here," the Russian mumbled softly to himself.

"What was that?" Minako asked, being the closest one.

"It was nothing. So you too hunt the blighted dead?" The Catholic asked, still focused on his weapons.

"If by that you mean 'want to vaporize the vampire scum that captured our friend,' then yeah, we're all about that," Makoto said, pounding a fist into her palm. "Did Asuka-chan call you in to help?"

"If by that you mean 'promised the location of the foul undead that infests this city so that I might destroy them,' then yes," he replied in a perfectly dead tone of voice.

Makoto snickered at the man's reply, then turned toward Ami. "Hey, I think I like this guy! If there are more registered vigilantes like him around, maybe we could all get together and hunt down evil together!"

Ami sweatdropped. "He, uh... doesn't really look like... how to put it... much of a 'team player'," she whispered quietly enough that she hoped the man across from her hadn't heard.

Rayden did, of course, but didn't care enough to look up from his gun maintenance. Besides, he didn't want to discourage the blue-haired girl from dissuading the brunette from bothering him.

"I think I found it!" Neptune suddenly shouted. Everyone except Rayden immediately whirled on her.

The water Senshi looked up from the Deep Aqua mirror. "I can see the power of Mars building to the north, in a mausoleum at the edge of the city!"

Minako immediately jumped out of her chair, and once again left the room.

Michiru was confused at her sudden departure, but put the strange behavior aside. "I see... there's a deep, stagnating darkness around her. The vision gets cloudier as I zero in on the location, but Mars is definitely there!"

Neptune looked up as the side door swung open, and then blinked as a blue-haired woman she'd never seen before walked up to the table and then planted her hands flat on top of it.

"Hello ladies," she said smartly. "I'm Captain Asuka Takami of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment. I'd drag the rest of my men up here and introduce them, but we're rather pressed for time."

"Wait, so **you're** Tsukino's boss?" Haruka demanded.

"I'm Tsukino-san's commanding officer, yes," Asuka replied. "I'm well aware that this presents some... challenges within your own unique chain of command. We can address those matters in due time, but for now, you have a location I need."

"I've got it!" Ami said excitedly, turning the Mercury computer around so that everyone could see the map she had brought up. "This is the only mausoleum located on that edge of the city! The land is currently in a dispute with the government that wants to pave over it, since it's rarely used anymore, and it's fallen into disrepair! It'd be a perfect hideout for our target!"

"I'll get the guys together and gear up," Asuka said immediately.

"Hold it," Neptune said to the new woman, trying to avoid making eye contact with Usagi, "I thought we weren't working for the government. What's going on here, exactly?"

Asuka regarded the Senshi of Neptune briefly before she smiled softly. "You're correct, of course. You're not working for the government. We're working for you."

Haruka blink-blinked. "Say what?"

"It's not especially complicated," Asuka insisted, crossing her arms under her breasts. "You're all legal residents of Japan, at least as far as your registration records can confirm, and me and my department are police officers. It's our job to protect and rescue the citizens of this city, and I don't recall an ordinance that limits that responsibility based on a citizen's ability to knock down a building with an energy beam. Why should I stay clear of danger while you all risk your lives for your friend? I have a job to do, here!"

While that explanation was impressive enough to shut up Neptune right away, Haruka shook her head.

"There's no point in you guys coming; you're just ordinary humans! You'll only get yourselves killed!"

Asuka chuckled as she turned around. "If that's the case, we'll do our best to stay out of your way while you ladies take care of things. But hopefully you'll find that ordinary humans can be useful, too."

The police captain turned away from the briefing room and was about to leave for her phone when the door leading to the lobby suddenly burst open.

"Captain! There you are!" Junko gasped, pressing a hand against her chest as she tried to catch her breath. "Thank goodness! Listen! I know where the vampires are gathering! The warehouses by the docks! We've got them!"

Asuka blinked. "What did you say?"

* * *

Sitting atop said warehouse, a lone figure wrapped completely in conspicuous rags chuckled as flickers of images, sounds, and even thoughts poured forth from the glowing sphere of iridescent light.

"Now... the choice... must be made... only one... path... can be taken..."

The Prophet was pre-cognizant, to be certain. His future sight was no trick or illusion.

But like all tools that could divine the future, it was flawed. While other devices such as the Gates of Time crystallized thousands of possible timelines based on probabilities, his visions were beholden to a greater power. As such, his predictions were absolutes - at least as far as he could tell - but the only predictions he could make were of events of enormous importance that were all but impossible to avoid, or events that he himself could affect to ensure it came to pass.

As of now, however, his future sight was nearly blind, and only fleeting possibilities would reveal themselves to him.

"I wonder... is this uncertainty... my lord's will... or the will... of those involved...?"

To be sure, a number of powerful people would be clashing soon, but currently it was a single woman who held the future in the palm of her hands.

Oddly enough, it was not the magical reincarnated princess of a long-dead interplanetary empire that had any pressing decisions to make, but rather a mere police captain faced with a difficult strategic decision.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Asuka asked, her face grim as Junko sat in front of her.

The redhead nodded. "Pretty sure. I mean, I don't have any proof or any evidence other than the weird surge this morning..."

"A psychic message? Are you serious?" Makoto asked skeptically.

Asuka rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "I know it doesn't sound credible, but her 'psychic hunches' have always turned out accurate before."

"Well, so what? We know where Mars is, right? Who cares about those other freaks?" Makoto protested, getting impatient.

"It's not that simple," Asuka grumbled, staring down at the map of the city. "If Chikiko is right, those other freaks may number in the hundreds, and will happily slaughter thousands of innocents just in the course of feeding themselves. If we ALSO assume that Neptune is correct, and that Sailor Mars is being held in that mausoleum, we can expect only a few vampires to be with her and not meeting at the warehouse. Those will probably be the leaders, and while they're the most dangerous, they're still sharply limited in the amount of damage they can do by themselves if they choose to attack on their own."

Ranma and Kyle, who had entered the room earlier while Junko was explaining herself, glanced at each other.

"So we either go after the army, or the leaders?" Ranma asked, frowning.

"Well, then we're going after the leaders, right?" Minako asked. "I mean, don't they say that you should cut the tail off the iguana to win a war?"

"That's cutting the head off a snake," Asuka deadpanned. "And yes, there's some merit to that argument. If we eliminate Ran, I'm confident that the other vampires can be hunted down and destroyed without any fear of this 'vampire uprising' making significant progress... but the chaos in the meantime could be devastating."

She sighed and rubbed her head. "And that's also discounting the possibility that Mars is being used as bait."

"Bait?" Usagi asked.

"Yes. Putting aside whether she's... still saveable or not, our enemy has to expect that we'd have some way of finding her. Meaning that even if it isn't necessarily a trap, they're going to be prepared for us." Asuka sat down and balled one hand into a fist, grinding it against her forehead. "But there's very little chance they could have predicted that Chikiko can pick up an abnormally powerful psychic pulse, especially seeing how none of us expected such a thing. If we do go to save Mars, we could be giving up a perfect opportunity to wipe out this threat once and for all!"

"I don't really see what the problem is," Haruka said, looking irritated. "Why don't you people go attack the vampires? We'll take care of Mars."

"Well, naturally, I assume you'll be pursuing Mars no matter what we do. That's not the question..." Asuka murmured, turning toward Usagi. "I'll also be contacting Core, but it'd take a damn miracle to get them mobilized on my word alone. More than likely they'd send a couple guys in to get butchered, and then move in once the vampires all scattered. We need to act fast if we're going to get anything done here."

The blonde cyborg stared back at her, uncertainty in her eyes. "Asuka-chan... I-"

"That's 'Captain Takami' to you," Asuka reminded her for the hundredth time. "And if you're worried that I might drag you off to the warehouses with us, don't be. Naturally I assume you'll be going to save your friend, and I wouldn't try to stop you."

Usagi gulped as she tried to keep herself from sniffling. "I'm... I'm not worried about that."

As the older woman raised an eyebrow, Usagi walked up to her side and laid a hand on her shoulder, tears leaking from the corner of her eyes. "Asuka-chan... I'm scared. For Rei-chan and for us, but also for you. I've seen how strong you are, and I... I don't know if we can win on our own."

Haruka nearly did a double-take. "What? You're kidding! What can these guys do that we can't?"

Ami leaned over to whisper in the blonde's ear. "Well, besides sharpshooting and planting bombs, I imagine they'd also be less reluctant to destroy a vampiric Senshi," she whispered harshly.

"Wh-Wha?" Haruka looked shocked at the explanation.

"We're all still hanging onto a bare thread of hope that Rei-chan still hasn't been turned, but if she has, then what?" Ami continued quietly, her eyes narrowing. "Do we restrain her? Reason with her? Try to heal her back to being human? Do you expect Usagi to have a plan for that? I can promise you, Asuka-chan does."

Haruka frowned. "And what if that plan involves killing Mars for good?"

"Rei-chan once asked a similar question of Usagi-chan," Ami whispered back, "and I rather liked Usagi's answer: she'll do what she has to. No more, and no less."

Asuka continued staring at the map of the city below her, her chin resting on her hands and Usagi still standing at her shoulder.

"Tsukino, what do you want me to do?" She asked finally, looking up at the cybernetic blonde. "If you want me to help you take down Ran, I will."

To her surprise, Usagi shook her head.

"No. I won't make that decision," Usagi said firmly, surprising the shorter woman. "Asuka-chan, you're one of the strongest girls I know. You're much smarter than me, and you have a much more important job. I haven't worked here for very long, but it's obvious why you're in charge even though some of the guys are better fighters."

Usagi smiled as she looked down at the police captain, and an articulated robotic limb idly wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. "I'm weak and not very smart, so I end up thinking with my emotions all the time. I guess that's fine if it's just us Senshi, but there are too many people counting on you." She sniffled again. "Please, you have to decide yourself. It's too important for me to choose."

Sailor Neptune twitched. "Did... Did a robot arm just come out of her shoulder?"

"You get used to it," Makoto said.

"If I'm such an impressive figure to you, then call me Captain, already," Asuka snorted as she pushed herself to her feet, forcing Usagi to back away. "Anyway, it's true that the vast majority of the vampires are vulnerable elsewhere and that a lot of damage could result from leaving them unchecked..."

Then the bluette turned toward Usagi, her eyes narrowed. "But you have a point about being weak and thinking with your emotions. Now that I think about it, leaving you in charge of fighting the most powerful vampires in the country is a tremendously bad idea. Especially seeing as it might be trap."

Usagi blinked in surprise, and then she sweatdropped. "Well, that wasn't really what I meant when-"

"I may have a responsibility to the citizens of this city, but I first have a responsibility to my subordinates!" Asuka declared, turning away and walking between Ranma and Kyle. "And I couldn't live with myself if I did something so stupid as let you charge into a vampire den without someone competent to tell you what to do. So I really have no choice."

She clapped Ranma on the shoulder and looked up into his eyes. "Gear up, soldier. This time we're in it to win. Can you do that?"

Ranma grinned and started cracking his knuckles. "Just get me close to that Ran jerk and say the word. I'll carve his stupid heart right out of him if I have to."

Asuka nodded, but lowered her voice. "Easy there, big guy. It might not be Ran you'll be fighting..." Then she turned back toward the room proper. "We'll be moving out within the hour! That includes you, Shikodan!"

The Russian finally took his attention from cleaning his guns - which he had been doing all throughout the various dramatics taking place in the room - and glanced behind him. "I have the location of the vampire masses. I can proceed on my own to-"

"Blah blah blah, cleanse the blighted undead from the city, blah blah," Asuka snapped, glaring at the superhuman. "Drop the annoying lone wolf routine and pack up your weapons. I didn't call you here just to act gloomy and spout insightful crap about responsibility. You're coming with us. We need the extra heavy guns."

Rayden's expression didn't budge. "And why do I suddenly take orders from..."

The Russian trailed off as he realized that all the DAPC officers had ignored him and walked out of the room, leaving him alone with the Sailor Senshi.

"So! I guess that just leaves us vigilantes, eh?" Makoto said cheerfully, walking up behind the only man in the room and slapping him on the back. She wasn't sure why, but something about the gloomy foreigner cheered her up considerably. She didn't know anything about him, but somehow she felt much safer for him being around.

"It would seem so," he groused. The girls would have guessed that he was extremely unhappy about the current situation, but the man's expression had never actually changed.

"Oh! Usagi-chan, don't you have to change?" Minako asked, turning toward the only member of their group that was also a police officer.

"You're right! Hold on!" Usagi closed her eyes briefly, and Haruka and Neptune flinched back as a circle of light appeared the cyborg's neck and floated down into the floor, replacing her blouse and skirt with a skin-tight black bodysuit.

"What? But then, Sailor Moon..." Haruka stuttered out.

"Oh, I'm over that," Cyber Moon said cheerfully as she turned to the side and raised one knee into the air. "Mina-chan, look! I found out how to change the outfit!" She pointed to the letters "DAPC" that were now stamped onto her thigh in thin, blue, italicized cursive font.

"Huh. Not sure about the font choice, personally," Minako mumbled. "A bit flowery for a police logo, don't you think?"

"I cannot help but wonder why I keep returning to this place," Rayden deadpanned as he stared listlessly at the wall. "It is as if something frequently clouds my memory as to the madness contained within these walls."

"Hey! What is this thing, anyway?" Makoto asked, poking at the bundle that Rayden had dropped onto the table when he entered.

If Rayden was any more annoyed at the brunette's question than he was at having to be in the same room with her, it didn't show. "That is the deliverance of sinners and monsters from this world. A gate of fire and steel to see those that would harm God's children to their final damnation. To the faithful, its roar is the choir of Earthly salvation. To the damned, it is the jury's call that marks the end of their mortal lives."

Makoto blinked repeatedly, mulling over that explanation. "So... I'm guessing it's either an MP3 player... or... a portal? You carry around a portal?"

"I dearly wish the Captain would make haste," Rayden deadpanned, his eye twitching.

* * *

"Heh heh heh... hahhh... very good... Captain..."

The Prophet stood up awkwardly as his crystal ball floated up above his shoulder, and the man stepped toward the edge of the roof and onto some crates that were stacked up next to the warehouse like stairs.

_Wham!_ "Gugh!" The side door to the warehouse suddenly burst open, and a young man with numerous cuts and bruises was shoved out into the sunlight.

"Hey! You bastards!" The man snarled, quickly covering his eyes and panting weakly as he rolled to his feet.

A pair of larger men stood at the doorway, scowling down at him. Behind them emanated a constant stream of noise; shouting, conversation, and the occasional sound of violent impacts all mixed together chaotically.

"Watch yourself, pup," the larger of the men said, baring his fangs as he grinned. "Out there in the sun, you're just some weak little kid! Be careful the cops don't catch you!"

His partner started laughing at the taunt. "That'll teach you to take us lightly, brat. You can sit out there and cook for a while."

They were about to turn around and enter the building again when the Prophet leapt down before them, a pair of heavily bandaged legs landing heavily upon the ground as layers of rags fluttered down around them.

"Wha? Who're-"

The Prophet quickly waved a hand at the vampire. "Silence yourself, brute. You have said your piece."

He turned around and offered his hand to the young man who was knocked down, who in turn looked only halfway disgusted by the gnarled, misshapen appendage as he pulled himself up.

"We stand on the apex of a new era, and you, the supposed inheritors of this world, bicker like children. Tell me, when our enemies unite against us, will you be able to stand back to back with this young man in battle, or will you scorn him then, too?"

The two larger men glanced at each other, utterly confused. "What? What're you going on about, old man?"

"Hey, who are you, anyway?" The second asked, walking up to the prophet and reaching forward to pick him up by the front of what passed for a shirt.

Before the midian could manage even that, the crystal sphere floating above the Prophet's head flashed brilliantly, and the three vampires all flinched back from the sudden searing brightness.

"Gwah!" Holding their hands in front of their eyes, the two vampires at the door staggered backward into the warehouse, and several people stopped what they were doing as they directed their attention toward the new source of commotion.

The Prophet entered the warehouse interior wordlessly, his crystal ball lowering itself into his hand as he stepped through the ranks of confused midians.

The vampire that was being bullied quickly darted inside behind the mysterious figure, still rubbing his eyes painfully, but glad to be in out of the sunlight.

"NOSFERATU..." the Prophet gasped out, somehow amplifying his normal wheezing mode of speech to echo through the relatively large building and overwhelm the hundreds of people that had crowded there. "EVEN AS... WE SPEAK... YOUR MASTER... RAN... IS FINALIZING HIS PLAN... TO ASCEND HIS RACE... YOUR RACE... TO MASTERY OF... THIS FEEBLE LAND..."

The Prophet glanced around, noting many of the young vampires whooping and cheering. "TO THOSE OF YOU... WITH LINGERING DOUBT... OR ATTACHMENT... TO THE WORLD... OF THE LIVING... NOW IS THE TIME... TO PUT SUCH TRIFLES... ASIDE... THAT WORLD... IS NO LONGER YOURS... THAT WORLD... WILL SOON CEASE..."

He threw his hands up, and his magic orb rose into the air, beginning to glow a brilliant cascade of colors.

"FOR AT THIS MOMENT... A NEW ERA DAWNS... ONE WHERE... HUMANKIND BENDS KNEE... ONE WHERE... STRIFE AND DESTRUCTION... REIGN FREELY... AND THE STREETS... ARE AWASH WITH BLOOD..."

Many of the vampires started licking their lips at this particular imagery, and the Prophet couldn't help but chuckle as he reached the climax of his speech.

"CHILDREN OF DARKNESS... YOU HAVE BEEN VITAL... TO USHERING IN... THIS NEW DARK AGE..." the Prophet took an especially long, gasping breath, and his hands began to glow a bright green. "YOUR SACRIFICE... IS APPRECIATED..."

"Wait... sacrifice? What?" One of the nearby midians asked nervously.

"You mean, like, in the war to come, right?" Another one guessed.

As if in answer, the entire warehouse interior suddenly lit up brightly, and the vampires looked about in surprise and panic.

The walls of the building were covered from top to bottom in strange, archaic scribbling that only now appeared in bright, writhing green flames. Halfway between eldritch runes and childish doodling, the runes were accompanied by bizarre drawings of eight-spoke wheels, stylized skulls and flames, and occasionally diagrams involving bizarre creatures and incomprehensible formulae.

"What's going on?"

"What have you done?"

"Get him!"

_BWOOM!_ As a few midians made a dash for the traitorous sorcerer, a shock wave of power blasted outward from him, knocking them flat on their backs as an enormous inscription of a wheel with eight spokes ending in arrows outside the circumference of the circle flickered into being on the floor of the warehouse.

"AS FORMER MORTALS... DRAGGED UNWILLINGLY... TO UNDEATH... I AM SURE... YOU CAN APPRECIATE... THE SUDDEN AND DIRE... FLEXIBILITY... OF THE FOOD CHAIN..." He raised his arms into the air, and the masses of vampires started to collapse all around him, howling in pain. "NOW COME... MY DARK MASTERS... FEED... ON THESE BLOATED SOULS..."

His single eye began glowing a fierce red, and his cloak started floating on an invisible wind as the nosferatu around him screamed in agony.

"YESSSS... AT LAST... IT HAS BEGUN..."

* * *

"Damn it Nagase, hurry up! We should've been there by now!"

The girl in question was currently resting against a building, panting heavily from having to make such an exertion in broad daylight.

Further up the street, a young man wearing dark shades and a baseball cap frowned at her, arms crossed over his chest. "I know it's hard, but do you think you could get your fat butt in gear? I mean, if we're late, what, it's only the birth of a new civilization, right? No big deal?"

Tsuna glared at the boy harshly, and then glanced down at herself. "My butt is NOT fat..."

"It'd better not be, after making me stand there and judge your stupid glamour cantrip for a damn hour," the boy growled.

"Well, I can't help it! It's not like I could use a mirror, and I wanted to make sure I looked okay!" Tsuna protested as she pushed herself to her feet. Although she had been advised to keep her usual human appearance for the sake of tricking Rei - not that it had helped much - now that the whole Mars fiasco was over with, she had been quick to learn how to shape the body to clear up imperfections and achieve a higher standard of beauty.

Not that she was vain or shallow or anything. Of course not. But the new vampire age was about to start soon, and she'd be damned if she was going to enter a new dark golden age while she was still too big to fit into her old high school uniform.

"Why don't we have reflections, anyway? It makes no sense! How does being a vampire affect the light bouncing off of a reflective surface as opposed to the light entering your retina?" She complained, quickly catching up to her companion.

"I dunno. MAGIC," the boy snapped as they rounded a building, reaching the warehouse docks that bordered that section of the city. "We're almost there! I hope nothing important's started without us..."

"Wait! What's that?" Tsuna gasped, pointing out into the harbor.

The male vampire was about to shout something insulting at her, but quickly lost his voice when he saw what she was referring to: a relatively small, black submersible emerging from the surface of the water. It definitely looked to be of military construction, and boasted a considerable gun turret on the front.

Neither of the midians were well-versed in military weapons design, but if they were, they would have come to the decisive conclusion that the submarine was designed primary to be a transport vessel. It's wide berth spoke of an expanded hold for weapons, supplies, and men, while its small size spoke of a lack of weapon systems that would be found on a standard warship.

"I... I don't know..." the boy mumbled.

_Tak!_ Both vampires looked up as they heard a noise above them, and both barely caught a glimpse of someone dashing over the rooftops before the figure vanished from view.

"This is bad. This is really bad," Tsuna mumbled.

"Come on! We have to warn the others!" The young man insisted, moving into a sprint as Tsuna rapidly moved to catch up to him.

They made it to the appointed warehouse in short order, but both immediately stopped in their tracks once they saw the building in question.

The windows, which had been blocked from the inside, emitted a subtle green light, and both of the young vampires could feel a dark, unsettling power emerging from the structure.

Besides that, there were the screams. Even new vampires had enhanced hearing, and the both of them were absolutely sure that they could hear people dying within the warehouse.

"What's going on in there?" The male vampire demanded, walking up to the structure and opening the door.

_Fzash!_ Immediately, a wash of green light poured over him, and it was only his sunglasses that prevented complete blindness.

Then again, given what was happening inside, he probably would have preferred to be blinded.

The floor of the warehouse was littered with nosferatu, many of them screaming in pain, but most already having expired. Those that were already dead were not, as was usual, reduced to a pile of dust, but rather they had become skeletons; clean, bleached, fanged puppets of bone piled on the ground and frozen in contortions of pain.

Those who were not yet dead provided a clue as to what had happened, as their flesh and muscle rapidly withered away in random, disparate chunks leaving only fresh bones behind. These individuals screamed and writhed, groping for crates, doors and windows even as they were robbed of the muscles and nerves necessary to manipulate their skeletal fingers.

"What's going on here?" The young man demanded, moving to step into the warehouse.

"No! Don't!" Tsuna screamed, grabbing hold of him and dragging him back. "Don't go in there!"

The boy could hardly find a good reason to disobey, and they both watched in morbid horror as the last of the tortured midians finally expired, their flesh evaporating off their bones.

"I can't... believe it..." Tsuna whispered, tears leaking from her eyes. "Who did this? What happened?"

"There's some kind of writing on the wall..." the boy mumbled. "But it doesn't look like any language I've ever seen."

"Wait! The sky!" Tsuna shouted, stepping back in surprise.

The boy looked up, and then his mouth hung open as a great swarm of darkness began to seep from the roof of the warehouse, stretching up into the sky like a massive swarm of insects.

"Could this be..." Tsuna gasped out, mesmerized as the great shadow ascended.

The wave of darkness stretched up slowly into the sky, at first looking for all the world like an abnormally fast plume of smoke.

Then... it began to expand.

Stretching wider and wider, the wisp of black grew, oozing across the sky and slowly covering up the mid-afternoon sun.

Within seconds, the sunlight was lost to the two vampires outside the warehouse, and both midians gasped as they felt strength returning to their body.

"The sun... it's gone! It's really happening!" The boy said in awe. "The world has been cloaked in shadow! It was true!"

"But... it makes no sense..." Tsuna mumbled, collapsing to her knees. "They're dead. They're all dead. What's the point of eternal night if the vampires have been all but eradicated? This wasn't what we were expecting..."

"It doesn't matter!" The young man said, pounding his fist into his chest. "We're still here, aren't we? Even if ALL the vampires besides us die, we can still go on! With the sun blotted out, the entire world will be at our mercy!" He raised his fists into the air, his expression one of insane glee. "We can create a new vampire race! Or just live by ourselves! It doesn't matter anymore! We're the masters of our destiny! And we have all eternity to make the most of it!"

_Thoomp!_ Before the young man could lower his arms, a concussion grenade slammed into his side, knocking the midian right off his feet and sending him flying into the warehouse.

_BWOOOM!!_

Tsuna's eyes trembled in shock and terror as the structure shook from the force of the blast, and she slowly turned her head around.

Standing at the edge of the alley, at the head of a squad of cyborgs, Igov's lip curled into a smirk around a burning cigarette. "Is nice to have dream, no?" He lowered his left arm, which snapped back into standard Gatling mode, closing the grenade tube shut.

"Y-You're General Yutchzky! The Red Death!" Tsuna stuttered, caught halfway between horror and awe. "Wh-What are y-you doing here?"

"Igov is merely sweeping trash from lower Tokyo, ensuring that dregs of society can go about business with only fear of fellow humans to worry themselves." The Russian cyborg spoke amiably enough as he approached the young woman, his footsteps resounding heavily upon the pavement.

Tsuna wasn't about to stick around when she had her full vampiric power available, meager as it was, and she rapidly hopped to her feet, promptly dashing away from the terrorist general.

Igov saw the girl stand up, and he thrust his right hand toward her.

_Zwom!_ A faded gray tendril of energy surrounded by twinkling lights shot from Igov's hand and touched the midian girl just as she began to pick up speed.

Tsuna was immediately surrounded by an energy field similar to the wave that Igov had just emitted, and her movements slowed to an absolute crawl as she was surrounded by glittering lights.

Igov wordlessly approached the young vampire as the cyborgs behind him moved toward to enter the warehouse, the soldiers automatically shifting to assault formation as grenadiers took position outside the windows.

_General. Initial scans show no activity within the structure._

Igov glanced toward his cyborgs, who had frozen in place while awaiting new orders. "Stand down," the Russian mumbled, "but maintain combat readiness. Something is not right here."

The moment the vampire girl was in reach, Igov snatched her bodily with one hand, holding her up in the air roughly as the energy field dissipated.

"Wh-What? What was... How...?" Tsuna paled and began sweating desperately and she found Igov's hand clamped firmly around her neck, holding her up into the air.

"That is new module being tested for use with chronosphere. Is called 'stasis beam'." Igov took a moment to spit his cigarette to the side. "With it, quick prey such as you at Igov's mercy. Now..."

The Russian turned toward the warehouse and moved to enter it, still carrying the panicking midian in one hand.

Once they were inside the building, the eyebrow over Igov's organic eye rose. The floor was littered with skeletons, all of them with very conspicuous and inhuman fangs. They also seemed unusually intact, save for a rather large circle of them that had been scattered among a layer of vampire dust; no doubt the results of his concussion grenade.

"What happened here? Who got to vampires before Igov?" The Russian demanded stonily, holding the vampire girl up above him as he glared into her eyes.

"I d-don't know! I arrived right before you did! All I know was that everything was glowing and there was all this weird writing on the wall!" Tsuna said desperately, clawing uselessly at the hand gripping her throat.

Igov glanced around the room, seeing no apparent trace of any writing. "Igov follow numerous vampire here from hidden warrens; was surprised to see creatures gather in such numbers during day. Why is this?"

"We were called her by Lord Ran! He's the master vampire in Tokyo!" Tsuna said, her eyes tearing. "His psychic call led us here, and me and my friend were late! When we arrived, it was already too late!"

"I see. You do not know who enemy is?" Igov asked.

"No! I mean, we have plenty of enemies, but no one that could do anything like this! Even the Sailor Senshi couldn't have pulled this off without also incinerating the entire block!"

His hostage seemed to be very cooperate so far, so Igov released some of the tension from his fingers as he continued. "And Igov supposes you also know nothing about dark cloud that appear out of nowhere."

Tsuna gulped. "Uh... well..."

At feeling the cyborg's grip tighten slightly, she squeaked and started talking. "Wait! No! I'm sorry! That was supposed to happen! We didn't know how Ran was planning to pull it off, but somehow the sun was supposed to be eclipsed today!"

"Eclipsed?" Igov repeated skeptically.

"Well, not really eclipsed, but... well... what just happened, I guess..." Tsuna trailed off. "Today the sun was supposed to be blocked for good, so that vampires could roam freely day or night-"

"Thus negating critical strategic weakness," Igov said humorlessly as he turned around and carried Tsuna back outside. "Is quite clever, in short term, Igov admit."

_THWAM!_ Before Tsuna knew what was happening, Igov had thrown her straight down into the concrete, and the vampire girl felt ribs and pavement alike crack as an impact crater formed underneath the mighty Russian.

As the midian started gasping in pain, Igov planted a foot on her stomach, and Tsuna whimpered at the amount of weight that threatened to crush her with but a slight shift in balance.

"As in all other things, in this too you are fools," Igov snapped. "You feed on human, no? What do you think happen to human sources of sustenance when sunlight is banished from world? Idiocy."

Tsuna coughed weakly, hacking up a bit of blood before she groaned. "It wasn't... my idea..."

"Regardless," Igov snapped, "I suppose you have no idea how to neutralize shroud, correct?"

The vampire girl nodded, and then paused to cough several more times.

"Do you know where this leader of yours is, at least?" Igov asked wearily.

Tsuna shook her head. "Ran doesn't... ugh! Make himself easy to find. He was supposed to come here eventually, but... I have no idea where he is now."

"Then you are useless to me."

Tsuna's eyes shot open in shock at the general's proclamation, and she gasped out a desperate protest as Igov lifted up his foot.

_CRUNCH!_

"Number 117, status report," Igov demanded as he lifted up his foot again, this time to brush off the wet bits of gore as most of Tsuna's body turned to dust.

_There are no unusual energy signatures in the area. There are no signs of further midian activity. Area is secure._ A nearby sensor drone buzzed, the antennae on its back raised into the air. _Reports indicate that a directive has been filed with Core regarding this location. No dispatch has yet been made. There is considerable confusion over the sudden atmospheric blackout. What's more, the phenomenon is spreading rapidly from this point. Sixty-eight percent of Japan has now been afflicted. At this rate, the phenomenon will reach a global stage within two hours._

Igov snorted. "And here is Igov, with army at heels and building full of dead vampires. Hmph. What is DAPC doing?"

_They have no activity posted to the normal police channels. It appears they are out of contact with their normal defense division._

"Igov doubts that will remain case, with sun blotted from sky," the Russian mumbled.

Finally, he shrugged. "All units, back to docks! Today the damnable midians have escaped our wrath by their own inexplicable self-destruction. The true guardian of Tokyo can deal with matter further. For now, we depart."

Igov's cyborgs needed no explanation other than the order, and without fanfare or hesitation the mechanical soldiers turned away from their unnecessary siege and stomped off toward the docks.

* * *

"Okay, seriously, what the hell?" Tiro asked, gaping as he gestured to the blackened sky. "That didn't actually happen, right? I'm hallucinating or something."

"Nope. It's real," Ranma confirmed, staring upward with his hands on his hips. "The sky just went totally dark at mid-afternoon, just minutes before we could attack the head vampires."

"Oh. Okay. So WHY ARE YOU SO DAMN CALM?!" Tiro shouted, clutching his head with his hands. "This is crazy! What's going on?"

Asuka shook her head from where she was loading a shotgun. The Senshi were transformed and gathered next to Cyber Moon, who had her mechanical, bunny-like sensor fins up to scan the bizarre cloud of darkness. The DAPC gathered slightly away from them, each checking their weapons and waiting for the order, save Hunter, who was resting lazily behind the rhino APC. Rayden sat on the hood of one of the police cruisers, staring expressionlessly into the gates of the graveyard containing the mausoleum.

"What's going on is the beginnings of a titanic shift in power," Asuka groused, cocking her weapon and turning toward the gates. "It seems events have been put into motion already."

_Tak!_ It was probably because everyone was so on edge at the sight of the sky darkening, but when a masked man in a tuxedo landed behind the group, opposite the mausoleum, he froze in panic at the sight of several guns and magical girls all whirling about to aim at him.

"Wait! It is I, Tuxedo Kamen!" He shouted, managing to keep his knees from shaking. "Sailor Moon, I've come to aid you!"

Almost everyone looked relieved once the newcomer was identified.

Almost everyone. "Snake, put your gun away," Asuka deadpanned.

Sailor Jupiter nodded. "So you decided to come after all."

"I couldn't let you all face danger without me," he declared gallantly, approaching Cyber Moon while sweeping his cape to the side and trying to keep someone between him and Snake at all times. "However, I'm confused to see... these people here as well."

Sailor Venus sighed. "Okay, look, we're not going through all this again. Short version: Rei's kidnapped by vampires. We're saving her. DAPC is here too. No questions."

"But-"

The masked hero was cut off as Cyber Moon suddenly took his hand, clasping it between her own.

"I'm sorry Kamen-sama, but we really don't have time now. For now, I just need you to fight with us."

Hesitation vanished from Tuxedo Kamen's face, and he nodded seriously.

"All right people!"

Everyone turned away from the touching scene of Cyber Moon and Tuxedo Kamen and focused on Asuka, who was leaning against a police cruiser and pointing up at the sky.

"As you can see, things just got a lot worse for us. We will be charging in directly. They will be ready. They will have their strongest vampires on the defense, and they will have their full powers now that the sun is inexplicably out of action."

She gestured to the large mausoleum in the middle of the land, several dozen meters beyond the gates. "Mercury says there are power surges in that structure. We're going to push our way in fast and hard. Snake, Moon, I want you to keep anything from coming at us fast from the front. If you see any zombies with bloated stomachs, shoot out their legs. The rest of the Senshi should form an artillery core and take turns wiping out everything in the path of our advance! Shikodan, Commander, you cover our flanks! And if bats suddenly start swarming the area, everybody needs to get as far away from Snake as possible and hit the dirt; he has something special as a countermeasure."

Asuka turned toward her subordinates. "DAPC! Our primary objective is to eliminate Ran! Secondary objective is to keep the Senshi alive! Tertiary objective is the elimination of any vampires in the area! Remember: don't stop shooting until they've turned to dust!"

She turned toward the Senshi. "I don't believe I have to list objectives for you ladies. Do what you have to do, and try not to let the fanged freaks get too close."

"Enough of this," Rayden said suddenly, standing up and slipping a cigarette out of his pocket. "The enemy comes."

Sure enough, as assembled warriors fell silent, they could hear a number of harsh scraping noises amidst the trees and gravestones ahead of them as well as some faint moaning noises.

Asuka jumped down from the hood of the cruiser and walked up to the gates, which were being held shut by a single locked chain.

_BLAM! Ch-chak!_ The chain fell to the ground in a rain of twisted pieces, and Asuka glanced back toward everyone else.

"Well? What're you all waiting for?"

Sailor Neptune sighed wistfully at Asuka as everyone started moving toward the gates. "She's really cute, isn't she?"

Sailor Uranus chose to ignore the comment, instead pointing at Hunter. "So, seriously, NOBODY is going to explain what the hell that thing is, and why we're not shooting it?"

"Here they come!" Asuka yelled, throwing an arm forward as ghouls began staggering into view from behind bushes and tombstones. "Open fire!"

* * *

Kimiko clicked her tongue as she walked down the main hall of the mausoleum, her eyes glowing faintly as they penetrated the darkness of the aging crypt.

"Lord Ran. The enemy comes," she said simply as she reached the inner sanctum, her voice echoing within the cavernous tomb.

A lone figure stood facing away from her, staring up at the ceiling as the sound of gunshots and the occasional magical explosion reached his ears.

"I see..." the vampire lord mumbled, still staring upward. "They arrived much earlier than expected. And yet, they are far too late..."

He grinned. "You can feel it, can't you? The sun... The sun is-"

"The sun has been blocked, yes," Kimiko interrupted, "but may I remind you, Master, that the DAPC has fought elder vampires at night and emerged unscathed before? And they have arrived alongside the Senshi, in greater numbers than ever before. I can only imagine the... inexplicable banishment of the sunlight has merely leveled the playing field."

Ran only chuckled from where he stood. "So even though it's gone this far... you still doubt our victory?"

"I have doubts that extend far beyond whether or not we succeed," Kimiko deadpanned, "but at the moment, my immediate concern is our survival. They enemy is cutting down the ghouls like wheat. We have a dozen or so other vampires that Kliff and I keep as attendants, but they're too weak to even slow the enemy down."

"I see," Ran mumbled, adopting a more serious expression. "Well then. Have Mortis unleash her horde. Usher them into this place, and then join me on the balcony."

Kimiko winced. "It's unimaginable that even her ghouls will cause any casualties. And she was quite upset at the total loss of her forces last time..."

"She will have an eternity to create more of her corpse dolls. Give the order," Ran snapped. "I wish to have our opponents sufficiently warmed up by the time they get here. It promises to be quite a show..."

Kimiko frowned deeply. "It is... as you wish, Master." She turned around to leave. "And do be careful. In your current weakened state, you may be unable to fend off that pigtailed fellow on your own."

Ran snorted. "I only wish the fool could live long enough to face me. I would personally repay the suffering he's caused our brethren."

"From what Mortis told me, he has a way of granting such wishes," she mumbled as a nearby explosion caused a slight tremor to run through the building, disturbing the many layers of dust on the walls and fixtures. "It begins."

"No..." Ran said, grinning. "Today... it ENDS."

* * *

"They're still coming! From the right!"

Kyle's minigun hummed noisily as it spat out a constant stream of destruction, ripping apart dirt and stone as bullet casings poured from the machine's ejection feed. Over his shoulder he carried the massive cylinder of interlocked weapons that was the Kujo 4B Mobile Armory, held in place with his free hand.

"Is it really possible to properly fire a weapon of that size one-handed?" Sailor Mercury shouted toward Asuka as she continued typing away on her computer.

"The Leiutenant Commander is at his best when he doesn't know that the things he does are impossible!" Asuka shouted as she shot at a few stray ghouls with her sidearm. "We're going to reach the mausoleum soon! Get ready!"

_BLAM! BLAM!_ Rayden blasted a charging vampire at mid-range, causing the midian to stagger and clutch his chest. Then he tucked the shotgun under his arm and took out his lighter to light up his cigarette.

The vampire spent a moment to gape, and then sprinted straight for the Russian, aiming to tear the foreign man's throat out.

At the last moment, Rayden burst forward, turning slightly to smash the end of his still-wrapped cannon into the midian and knock it off its feet.

The moment the vampire hit the ground, Rayden raised a foot over the monster's chest.

"Peace be with you." _CRUNCH!_

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!"

"Venus Crescent Moon Beam!"

Waves of magical power crashed into the rows of monuments and tombstones surrounding the mausoleum, digging craters among the graves as vampires and ghouls vanished in bursts of searing energy.

"Wait!" Sailor Mercury shouted. "There's something coming! No... A lot of somethings! Watch out!"

_Crash!_ The cracked double-doors to the mauoleum burst outward as an abomination shouldered through the doorway, a gutteral moan emerging from within its helmet.

"What the hell is that?!" Uranus screamed at the sight of the monstrosity, a sentiment echoed by Tiro and Junko who were following the formation near the back.

Asuka clenched her teeth at the sight of the giant undead, but then brightened when she saw a few of the pot-bellied suicide ghouls scampering out from between the monster's legs. "Aim for the small ones! The small ones! Stop them there!"

The crack of gunfire, the screech of sizzling plasma dischargers, and a few unnaturally accurate roses greeted her command as those with less cumbersome methods of attack shot down the agile little zombies. Within two seconds, the last of the explosive pawns keeled over, rolling limply into a puddle of its own blood as its belly started to swell even further.

_BWOOOM!! BWOOOM!! KABOOM!!_ The abomination was lost to sight for a moment as it was surrounded by detonations, and when the noise of the explosions had faded, the gurgling howl of the devastated golem filled the air.

_Thwump!_ What was left of the abomination fell heavily onto the ground, already lit aflame by the explosions that had destroyed both legs and much of its torso.

"There's more coming!" Jupiter shouted as she saw several shadows leaping from the roof of the mortuary into the scattered gravestones all around. Meanwhile, more shapes appeared from within the building itself, the groans and gasps of ghouls floating above the sounds of heavy footsteps.

"They're the fast ones! They're vulnerable right before they make a lunge!" Asuka shouted. "Moon! Senshi! Throw something into the mortuary while they're still packed together!"

"Right!" Cyber Moon shouted as her missile racks popped up out of her shoulders.

"How about this? World Shaking!" Uranus cried, trying her best to focus on the objective and not on all the bizarre things that kept coming out of Usagi's body.

_WHOOM! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!_

BLAM! "Ha ha ha! I knew today was gonna be special!" Snake cheered as he blew away a clawed ghoul that was lunging for him. To his side, Hunter dragged down another of the undead puppets that had made a particularly poor choice of targets. "Almost there! Come on!"

"Hunter! Guard our exit point!" Asuka shouted back at the warbeast. "We might have to get out in a hurry, so keep this place clear, all right?"

"HRAAAAH!!" The zergling growled and then scampered off into the scattered gravestones, pouncing at a vampire who quickly darted away in fear at the beast.

"Entrance is clear! Move in!"

* * *

Kimiko frowned as she alighted on the balcony next to Ran, her enhanced hearing picking up even the approaching warriors' conversations amongst the explosions and gunshot.

"Master, they will be here soon," she said wearily. "The special ghouls managed to stall them. Nothing more."

"As expected," Ran mumbled, his body fading into the darkness until it was little more than a faded outline. "These are not ordinary opponents. I look forward to the upcoming battle."

Kimiko would have thrown her hands up in the air in exasperation if she hadn't possessed such enormous self-control. "I still cannot fathom how we are to stop them." Her body too began to fade away.

"Sit and watch, servant," Ran said as he spread his arms. "Watch the true power of the nosferatu, combined with ancient power from the stars! Watch, and see our deliverance manifest!" He grinned again. "They have arrived."

"Everybody, get into cover! Watch for loose rubble that could fall on you, and mark an exit route!" Asuka shouted, flattening her back against a column as everyone entered.

"It's almost pitch black in here!" Sailor Venus complained. "Cyber Moon, don't you have a light or something?"

_Fwoosh!_ Before Cyber Moon could check for any lighting devices, or any of the police officers could reach for an emergency flare, several torches positioned all around the inner sanctum suddenly lit ablaze.

Sailor Jupiter blinked as her eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden light. "Well... that was ominous."

_FWOOM!_ Most of the assembled warriors flinched as they heard the sound of flames behind them, and a glance back revealed the entire hall behind them awash with fire.

"Aw, crap," Uranus mumbled. "Are they going to burn the building down around us?"

"No, I don't think so," Asuka said, observing the fire for a moment. "The fire isn't spreading. It's a wall... to keep us in."

_Fwoom! Fwoom! Fwoom!_ One by one, the small openings and windows leading out of the inner sanctum were engulfed in immobile firestorms that burned without any apparent source of fuel.

"This isn't so much a trap... as it is an arena," Asuka spat.

"Wait... what is that?" Cyber Moon asked timidly as she pointed to an object in the middle of the room.

Everyone had already seen the object briefly, but most had largely dismissed it, occupied as they were with their escape routes being cut off. It was the only thing in the crypt that didn't look old and decrepit; a black lacquer coffin wrapped in chains that were attached to the surrounding floor and wall.

What Cyber Moon had noticed that the others didn't, and the reason why she had gone terribly pale, is that the sigil of Mars was stamped atop the vessel.

"No... No! We didn't make it in time!" Moon shouted, slumping to her knees as her fellow Senshi surrounded her.

"INDEED, YOU ARE TOO LATE," Ran's voice suddenly boomed.

Everyone promptly began searching around the mausoleum, their weapons ready.

"Where are you, you bastard?"

"Show yourself, coward!"

"God's justice is inevitable where it is not swift, creature. Reveal yourself and face redemption."

"HA HA HA! WHAT A HEARTY MIX OF THREATS YOU HAVE FOR ME! I'M FLATTERED, BUT SADLY, I WILL NOT BE YOUR OPPONENT TONIGHT."

_Clang! Clang! Clank!_ One by one, the chains around the coffin broke apart.

"I HAVE A NEW ADDITION TO MY INNER CIRCLE TODAY, YOU SEE..."

"No... No... No..." Cyber Moon chanted as she fell to her knees, clutching her head.

"AND IT'S TIME FOR HER FIRST MEAL. ARISE, MY LOVELY REI, ARCHON OF FLAMES! DEVOUR THEM ALL!"

_Kthunk!_ The lid of the coffin clattered onto the dusty stone floor as the figure within slowly stood up, her movements uncertain and wobbly.

"M-Mars? Is that you?"

Standing up from within the coffin was Rei Hino. Her skin, which had always had a light, creamy complexion was now a smooth alabaster, and her sleepy, confused eyes glowed a bright crimson. She was wearing an elegant black silk gown that perfectly matched her hair, and a few strange sigils appeared to have been tattooed onto her arms and hands.

Rei seemed groggy as she stood up and looked at everyone assembled in front of her, and her confused expression turned to one of dread as realization dawned.

"Rei-chan..." Cyber Moon gasped painfully, stepping forward.

"No! Stop!" Uranus shouted, quickly grabbing hold of the girl and holding her back. "Don't get close!"

Rei shook her head weakly for a moment, and then scowled before glaring up at the ceiling. "What is this?! Some kind of sick joke?"

"OH, NO, I ASSURE YOU, THE TIME FOR JOKES AND SCHEMES HAS PASSED. ASSEMBLED BEFORE YOU ARE YOUR FRIENDS AND ALLIES FROM YOUR PAST LIFE. YOU WILL NOW FEAST ON THEM. OR REDUCE THEM TO CINDERS, IF YOU WISH; IT'S ALL UP TO YOU!"

"Forget about it, you bastard!" Rei shouted defiantly. "No way am I-GAAAAAAAAH!"

The various warriors looked about in confusion as the newly turned vampire suddenly collapsed onto her knees, clutching her head.

"I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT TRY TO RESIST AT FIRST... BUT SADLY, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER. YOUR WILL IS MINE; TO RESIST ONLY CAUSES SUFFERING."

"Guh! Rgh!" As she struggled with the intense pain bombarding her, Rei's hand lit ablaze, the fire building rapidly into a proper projectile.

"Rei-chan! Fight it!" Cyber Moon said desperately, looking around the room. "We'll find a way to help you! I promise!"

Asuka shook her head. "Can we locate Ran at all?"

"No, something's interfering with my sensors," Sailor Mercury said through clenched teeth. "As far as I can tell, Mars is the only thing around other than us."

"What about those fire walls?" The police captain asked.

"I could try a deep submerge," Neptune volunteered. "It might be enough to clear one of the paths out."

At that point, Rei let out a terrified scream, and a fireball erupted from her hand and sailed toward the middle of the attackers.

"MOVE!" Everyone dove away from the projectile, which exploded violently in front of the entry hall, blowing flames and bits of debris away from the flaming pit that it left behind.

Cyber Moon trembled as she saw Rei shaking on the ground. "Rei-chan..."

"You bastard..." the Senshi of fire mumbled as she stared at the ground, clenching her teeth. "Stop it! I won't fight them! STOP!"

"OH, YOU'LL FIGHT THEM," Ran's voice assured everyone. "THE MORE YOU RESIST MY CONTROL, THE MORE YOU WEAR YOURSELF OUT. MANIPULATING A SERVANT VAMPIRE IS AS EASY AS BENDING THE LIMBS OF A DOLL. RESISTING A MASTER VAMPIRE... WELL, LET'S SEE HOW FAR YOU CAN GO, SHALL WE?"

"URGH!" Rei threw herself on the floor as flames started to build all around her, none of them bending to her will. "No... c-can't... stop him..."

She gazed up at Cyber Moon, tears falling from her eyes and boiling away to vapor before they hit the floor. "Please... you have to kill me... I don't... I don't know how much longer... I can hold out..."

"No! I won't do that!" Moon screamed back, shaking her head furiously. "There has to be another way! We'll save you!"

"This is ridiculous," Rayden mumbled as he stepped up next to Asuka and grabbed the rags wrapped around Judgment.

_Sshrip! Ch-chunk!_ The massive cannon was promptly leveled at the prostrate vampire, and the gunman took a brief puff of his cigarette. "I can finish this myself. These fools can blame me for her murder if they wish."

Asuka seriously considered giving the Russian man the nod to go ahead for a moment, but before she could stop him, Ranma stepped up and gently pulled the cannon barrel down.

"No. I'll take care of this," the pigtailed man said quietly. In his hand he held a rebreather and a pair of extrasensory goggles. "I should have the exits cleared in about a minute. Have everyone hit the ground right before then," he said to Asuka before walking past her, pulling the goggles down over his head.

Asuka blinked as Ranma passed by. "Wait... what's happening now?"

That question was on everyone's mind as Ranma walked out into the middle of inner sanctum while fastening the rebreather mask. Cyber Moon blinked away her tears as she stared in confusion, and Rei looked up hesitantly from where she was still kneeling.

"Look, before anything else happens, I wanna say I'm sorry," Ranma said, the mask muffling his voice somewhat. "I know it isn't really my fault, but I was in a position to stop the vampires when they captured you, and I screwed up."

Rei wiped her eyes for a moment, confused at the sudden shift in the situation. "You tried everything you could! It's my fault for letting my guard down!"

"Even so... I feel like I should take responsibility here," he said sadly, gripping the barrel of the Jackal at his belt.

Rei blinked. "Uh... wait... take responsibility... how, exactly?"

_BWOOM!_ Rei lurched to the side as a silver bolt wreathed in green flame barely missed her and instead impacted her coffin, reducing a full half of the vessel to blackened splinters.

"Shrrreeagh..." The Jackal, once again sporting sharp, curved teeth and a single eye where the iron sight should be, growled at its target, who remained frozen in shock.

"Wait, I'm confused. Is Ranma-kun going to kill her?" Junko asked.

"I don't know," Asuka said simply, staring at the scene in the middle of the inner sanctum.

"Why does his pistol have teeth?" Sailor Mercury asked, horrified by the turn of events.

"I don't know," Asuka repeated.

"So, if Saotome's fighting vampire Mars, what should we do?" Snake asked, looking annoyed.

"I don't know," Asuka repeated again.

Uranus threw up her hands. "Well, is there anything useful that you DO know?"

Asuka thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. "Judging by the gradual thinning of the air and the currents, and despite the flames all around us being magical in nature, they're consuming oxygen at a normal rate. If we don't escape from here or create a significant source of air flow soon, we'll all suffocate before anyone gets a chance to eat or immolate us."

"Well, that's just swell," Sailor Jupiter snapped. "Should we blast a hole in the ceiling, then?"

"Not yet," Asuka said firmly. "Ranma said he could handle this, and I'm going to give him his chance. Simply stay put and be ready to take cover."

"You... You..." Rei's shocked expression melted into an enraged one as she shot up to her feet. "You shot at me! You asshole!"

"Well, you said you wanted to die, didn't you?" Ranma asked, patting his pistol approvingly.

"I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU!" Rei screamed furiously.

"I don't see what difference it makes if you want to die so badly," the pigtailed man scoffed. "Personally, I didn't think you were that weak, but taking care of this sort of thing is my job, so-"

_SVSH!_ The pigtailed man vanished in a blur as Rei suddenly slashed at him with a trio of flaming talons.

"I'll show you who's weak!" The nosferatu growled, her hands erupting in flame as Ranma landed a good distance away from her. "Shadow flare!"

Ranma jumped to the side as twin fireballs veered by him, detonating on the wall. "I really don't see how Ran thinks this is going to work. I mean, it's bad enough you can't bring yourself to fight us, but I doubt you'd last ten second even if you could!"

A vein popped up on Re's head. "Well, since you've taken care of that first little problem, let's see how long I last, shall we? Soaring vulcan!" A burst of fire summoned a dozen flaming birds around her hands, and one by one they dove at Ranma, exploding on pillars and piles of rocks as he flipped and weaved around the tomb interior.

"Moon, aren't you going to stop this?" Tuxedo Kamen demanded. "If we don't hurry, one of them is going to kill the other for sure!"

Cyber Moon didn't turn to regard the masked prince, her eyes locked on the combat in front of her. "I..."

The other Senshi leaned in closer, awaiting their princess' orders.

"I trust Ranma-kun," she said finally, watching as Ranma spat another insult and again dodged a flurry of fireballs. "I don't know what he's doing, but he's doing it for us. And for Rei-chan, too."

"And if she dies? Or him, for that matter?" Sailor Neptune asked, her arms crossed under her breasts. "You're telling us you won't regret this decision?"

Cyber Moon turned toward the Senshi, a sad smile on her face as a tear ran down her cheek. "It's too late to worry about regrets. But I'm going to give Ranma all the time he needs. Besides, I don't think he intends to kill Rei-chan."

"What makes you think that?" Uranus asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Because if he did," Moon replied, turning back to the battle, "I think Rei-chan would be gone already."

"Yeesh! You couldn't hit me if I stood still and painted a big target on my chest!" Ranma taunted, completing his third circuit around the midian.

Asuka's eyes narrowed as she noticed Ranma's hand, which was spread open conspicuously as he leapt from point to point.

"Then stay still and let me hit you, already!" Rei snapped, summoning another flock of fire birds.

"Hey, I'm just trying to be constructive," Ranma said, pulling in his thumb and then his forefinger into a fist. "You're supposed to be the vampire superweapon, right? The bloodsuckers don't stand much chance if this is the best you can do!"

Asuka nodded firmly as Ranma pulled in his middle finger.

"Shut up, jackass!" Rei screamed, her flames building all around her. "Before I get **really** mad!"

At seeing everything but Ranma's pinky pulled into a fist, Asuka suddenly dove onto the floor. "EVERYBODY, HIT THE DIRT!!"

Rei immediately halted in surprise. "Wait, we're doing what now?"

Ranma ripped off the rebreather as he felt the waves of heat surround him, and he gathered his energy into his free hand as he tossed the mask aside. "HIRYU SHOTEN HAAA!"

_HwoooooOOOOOOOOOOOSH!_

* * *

"Gods below, what a complete waste," Mortis griped as she lounged atop a tree branch, her arms crossed over her chest. "It's rare enough that I'm ever in a situation where I get to USE the abominations, and this one was wiped out before it could even put up a fight! It's disgusting!"

Leaning against the tree below, Kliff rubbed his eyes wearily. "Please, stop talking. It's hard enough staying awake all day without you boring me into oblivion."

"I'm serious!" The woman complained, gripping a hand into a fist. "The countless nights I spend assembling and soul-bonding those ghouls, all wasted! And not in a fair fight, like last night, but in a useless charge as the enemy just steamrolls through them!"

"At the end of the night, ghouls are still merely ghouls," the German said scornfully. "You were foolish to invest so much effort in such weak servants."

Mortis bristled. "Oh, shut up! It's not like your precious underlings managed to..."

The blindfolded vampire trailed off, a wave of nervousness washing over her. "Hey... do you feel that?"

"Eh? What? Is the sun coming out again?" Kliff asked, suddenly alert and on his guard. He was as pleased as any nosferatu that the sun had been inexplicably banished, but he didn't expect it would last for as long as Ran hoped.

Or at the very least, he hoped it didn't. His primitive education during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire was only dimly remembered, but he was pretty sure that sunlight was a pretty important aspect of the natural world to dispense with completely.

"No. It's... something else..." Mortis mumbled, staring off at the main mausoleum through the band over her eyes. "It's as if... the spirits of the dead are unsettled. Their tombs are being destroyed."

Kliff snorted. "Is that all? Don't bring up such things. We have far more important responsibilities than being grave caretakers."

Mortis shook her head. "You shouldn't dismiss lesser undead so easily. They can be very dangerous in their petty spite."

"Any ghost that has issue with me is free to try their luck in approaching me," the German said mockingly. "I would be happy to relieve them of the undeath that tortures them so."

Mortis tsked and turned up her nose, annoyed at the other vampire's disrespect for his fellows.

"Besides, soon the attackers will be dead and the destruction will stop," Kliff reasoned, "so there's no point in worrying about the damn phantoms."

"Are you sure?" Mortis said skeptically.

"Just look at that place," Kliff said, pointing to the mausoleum in the distance as flames burned constantly at every possible entrance and exit. "They've been sealed inside an enormous TOMB surrounded by FIRE. How could they possibly escape to cause more havoc?"

_HWOOOOOM!_ Both vampires flinched back as a tremendous blast of wind blew out of the mausoleum in a burst of dust and debris. The flames surrounding the crypt were blown out instantly, and the top of the structure was ripped off as a small tornado ripped through it.

Kliff gaped as Mortis sighed.

"Well, in your defense, that seems pretty impossible to me," Mortis remarked, standing up on the tree branch.

"What in the hell is happening over there?" The German asked, watching in shock as the tornado - suspiciously shaped like a dragon flying straight upward into the sky - narrowed into a thin, focused cyclone that steadily ripped apart the mausoleum roof and sent it flying up into the air.

After a few moments, Kliff saw figures dashing out of the dust of the explosion, and he clenched his teeth.

"Unbelievable! I should have known better than to believe that the new chick could handle things on her own!"

"I don't know what's going on in there, but it looks like we have to play trashman," the female midian said, stretching her arms. "A good thing too; I'm going to need fresh ghouls after this fiasco."

"Whatever," Kliff mumbled, his body slowly fading away as he arranged a teleport. "I don't care. You can even have that pigtailed bastard, if you find him. Let's just get this night over with. I get cranky when I'm up too late."

* * *

_HWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!_

Rei struggled desperately against the cyclone as it battered her body relentlessly, tossing her about in the air and sapping her strength.

'What is this? How did he create a force like this so quickly?'

Numerous possibilities came to light: everything from the wily policeman being a youma in disguise to the possibility he was a reincarnated prince of the Moon Kingdom.

At present, however, the only relevant matter was how she was going to get out of this tornado without being thrown through six tons of concrete.

"Whoa!" She barely managed to twist to the side as the pieces of a shattered column flew up right past her, joining the remains of the roof it had once supported.

"Damn it Ranma, where are you!" The former Senshi screamed against the wind. "Did you do this? Answer me!"

In response, Rei felt the winds around her weaken considerably, and very nearly threw herself into a wall as the force she had been fighting against suddenly ceased. "What? What happened?"

She glanced around at the wind-swept ruins, noting with relief and growing dread that she couldn't find anybody among the scattered rubble and broken fixtures; neither her friends, nor her opponent.

"Ranma? Show yourself!" Rei demanded.

After a few moments of silence, she sighed and looked down. "Look, I'm sorry I fought you. You're right, after all. It doesn't matter who finishes me. It's probably better that it's one of you and not Usagi." She spread her arms apart as she floated in the air. "Go ahead! Finish it!"

For several moments, only silence greeted her request.

"Don't stop fighting," said a voice from behind.

Rei turned hesitantly, and her eyes widened as a chunk of rubble smacked into her, plastering her against a nearby wall.

_Wham!_ "OW! You jerk!" The dark Senshi complained as she kicked away the chunk of marble. "I'm a vampire, you idiot! That doesn't even damage me, it just hurts!"

Ranma snorted as he stood atop a ruined statue, kodachi in his hand. To Rei's surprise, the corrupted Jackal was holstered at his side, though the gun occasionally twitched and snarled to indicate its displeasure at being ignored.

"If you die that easily, Usagi-chan won't forgive either of us," Ranma said sternly, flipping the blade around with his fingers. "I know it's hard, but you have to fight."

Rei shook her head in confusion. "Fight... you?"

"Here I come..." _Vsssh!_ Ranma's body became a blur, and the blade in his hands lashed out in a blazing arc of silver light.

_Thwoom!_ Rei's body, in response, seemed to disintegrate into a cloud of fire, and Ranma's weapon did little but disturb the flames as his target vanished.

"Huh. That's a neat trick," the pigtailed man mumbled, bouncing off a column and landing in the middle of the room.

_Fwoom! Fwoom! Fwoom!_ All around Ranma, Rei-shaped bodies of fire flickered into being, each one's hands exploding into blazing fireballs.

"Okay... if you want a fight so badly..." the fire dolls began as the temperature in the room climbed, "YOU GOT IT!" _BOOM! BOOM! KABOOM!!_

* * *

"_Hack! Cough!_ Geez! _Hack!_ Are we _Gasp!_ clear?" Asuka shouted as she staggered out of the dust cloud, immediately dropping behind a gravestone for cover.

"I don't _Cough!_ know! I think everyone _Cough!_ got out okay!" Sailor Uranus said as she followed the police captain, waving the dust out of her face.

Sailor Neptune emerged next, holding her hand over her mouth until she was clear of the suffocating debris. "What WAS that?"

"That was Saotome," Asuka deadpanned. "That's just how he does things. One minute he's shooting and stabbing people like any sane human being, and the next? BOOM! Tornado."

"Seems like a handy guy to have around," Sailor Neptune mumbled, staring back at the crumbling mausoleum.

"Oh man! _Cough!_ You have no idea! _Cough!_" The women sweatdropped as Tiro stumbled out of the dust cloud. "Ranma keeps this team alive, I'm telling ya!" Another brief coughing fit ended with him suddenly falling against Neptune, who yelped in surprise and held him up.

"Speaking of Saotome, is he going to be okay in there? I mean, aside from the tornado thing, he's in there alone against Vampire Mars." Uranus groused, planting her hands on her hips.

"I'm not that worried. Saotome-kun can take care of himself, and knows how to run away when he's outmatched." She frowned. "What I'm more worried about is us. Partially because Tiro is with us and he's useless..."

"Hey!" Tiro shouted in protest from where he was now almost wrapped around Neptune's leg as the green-haired woman tried to pry him off.

"... But more because nobody but us seems to have retreated the way we came," Asuka continued. "If we get separated, the enemy may be able to pick us off before we can regroup and attack again."

Uranus nodded. "That makes sense. We should find Moon, quickly!"

"I was thinking more along the lines of Snake, but that could work too. I guess. Maybe." Her expression looked more and more doubtful the more she thought about it. "Well, it's possible they got lost together."

"Would somebody get this guy OFF of me?" Neptune suddenly shouted, stamping her feet.

"Eh?" Sailor Uranus turned around, and then raised an eyebrow as he saw Tiro standing away from Neptune while dusting himself off. "What do you mean? He's not even touching you."

Neptune, for her part, looked absolutely surprised by the truth of this fact, and remained silent as she groped for something to say.

"Nice reflexes," Asuka mumbled to Tiro as she walked past him through the graveyard.

"Self-preservation instinct," Tiro replied sagely, giving his superior a thumbs-up.

Before Tiro's lechery could be explored further, Asuka spat out a curse and ducked behind another monument.

"Crap! There's more out there!"

"What? More what?" Sailor Neptune asked.

"Ghouls. The nasty ones," she replied, peeking around the stone. The only indication she could see was a rotted arm hanging off the ground, barely visible from behind a statue of a WWII major. "It looks like an ambush."

"I didn't think those things were that smart," Neptune commented as she crouched down next to the police captain.

Asuka turned away and nodded. "Ordinarily they're not. Which means that there's probably someone close by coordinating them." She thought for a moment, and then slung her shotgun over her back while pulling out her sidearm. "We should change our position. If the ambush isn't working, they'll probably try to surround us before they attack, since they're apparently using strategy now. If we can force them to leave cover, or find some of the others, we should be able to finish this easily."

As she finished speaking, she noticed that Sailor Neptune was still staring at her, almost mesmerized. "What?"

"You have very pretty eyes," she said softly, smiling.

Asuka sweatdropped. "Uh... what?"

"Hey! We have work to do, here!" Uranus shouted angrily, a vein popping up on her head. "Cut that out!"

"What? It was just a compliment!" Neptune said defensively as she stood up. "You don't think she has pretty eyes?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't!" The blonde said heatedly before shaking her head. "I mean, that doesn't matter! We're in the middle of a battle! You should be fighting, not flirting!"

"Sounds to me like the pot calling the kettle black," Neptune said smugly, crossing hers arms over her chest.

"Wait... what's going on here? I'm confused," Asuka mumbled, holding her head.

"Heh heh. This is so cool," Tiro said, watching the conflict intensely.

"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAGH!" An otherwordly screech from behind the group finally silenced the two bickering Senshi as a pot-bellied ghoul scurried between the graves, its jaw hanging open as it leaked drool and other repulsive fluids onto the ground.

"I'd like to rescind my earlier comment," Tiro said blithely as he pressed his back up against a gravestone. "This bites."

"Stop complaining and shoot it!"

"We've got more on the left!"

_Blam! Blam!_ KABOOM!

* * *

"Now where are we?" Sailor Jupiter asked, idly running a hand through her ponytail to try and get the dust and bits of rock out of it.

"It seems we ran pretty far, didn't we?" Venus said nervously, glancing back at the mausoleum. "I thought the others would follow us when the entrance blew open, but..."

Snake, who was the only other person there aside from the two Inner Senshi, raised a hand to silence his companions. "There's something over there," he said quietly, pointing toward an intricate marble shrine that towered over the surrounding graves. "Come on."

Sailor Venus followed the American with undisguised enthusiasm, but Jupiter was more cautious. "Shouldn't we head back and try to find the others?"

"You can do whatever you want. I'm not your boss," Snake said apathetically. "As for me, I have a mission to kill some bloodsuckers, and the only bloodsucker I could find back there is locked in epic combat with my buddy." He grinned. "I have to find some fresh targets. I haven't killed enough today."

The Senshi of Jupiter felt a chill crawl down her back at the sight, while Venus simply sighed in joy as she stared at the man with stars in her eyes.

Not wanting to abandon the Senshi of love to the officer's destructive tendencies and cruel indifference, Jupiter followed them to the shrine, entering the small structure and looking around for any sign of the enemy.

Snake looked up at the structure, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he worked out the architecture in his head. "Let's see... the ceiling looks pretty heavy, but it's not solid... the openings in the front between the column leads to the gap between the interior ceiling and the roof..."

The Senshi turned and stared at him. "What are you mumbling about?" Jupiter asked suspiciously.

"Bombs," Snake responded, turning around. "But never mind that. There are some folks waiting to introduce themselves, I think."

The Senshi gulped as multiple figures started to emerge from the trees and tombstones scattered outside the shrine.

"Heh, we've got a sharp one, here!" One vampire said happily, cracking his knuckles as he emerged.

"Feh, there's only three of 'em. And those two in the back are too skinny," a haughty-looking vampiress groused as she hopped down from the trees.

"I kinda like the skinny ones," another man said. "The blood goes down easier."

"Plus you can have more fun with 'em before you kill 'em," a shorter midian giggled as he bounced onto a statue. "I don't like fat chicks."

"You're disgusting, you know that?" Another woman growled as she stepped into view. "Let's just kill them and report to Master Kliff. Save your ape-like behavior for the civilians."

As Jupiter and Venus stepped closer to each other within the safety of the shrine, moving into combat stances, Snake frowned.

"What? FIVE of you? That 'aint fair..."

"Yeah, life is tough, isn't it?" One of the women chuckled. "Don't worry, it won't be a problem for much longer."

"Snake-kun, what are we going to do?" Venus asked, much to Jupiter's chagrin. While the brunette could appreciate that Snake probably had more combat experience than all the Senshi put together, she hardly thought of the psychotic American as a good leader, much less a good leader of a troop of magical girls.

Snake, in response, bounced a concussion grenade up in his hand before pulling out the pin. "Just stay where you are for a sec," he mumbled, tossing the grenade in a high arc behind him.

_Pink!_ Both Senshi blinked in confusion as the grenade sailed into the crevice above them, landing in the gap between the ceiling and roof that Snake had mentioned briefly earlier.

"Wait... why-" Jupiter began, her face paling.

_BOOM!_ Both Senshi screamed in surprise as the ceiling above suddenly came down on top of them, and Snake smiled happily as a wave of dust washed past his legs.

"Ow! Ow ow ow! What the hell are you doing?!" Jupiter snapped, struggling to push a particularly large chunk of marble off of her.

"_Cough!_ S-Snake-kun, I think you missed," Venus said weakly, gagging on the dust that was kicked up.

The vampires, meanwhile stared in wide-eyed shock as the American rested his shotgun over his shoulder.

"Well... it's still not quite fair with only five of you, but at least you have a chance now," Snake said regretfully, pulling another grenade from his belt. "Did you guys want to attack first, or should I go ahead?"

The vampires continued staring, their expressions mixes of confusion and terror.

"Is... Is running away an option?" One of the girls squeaked, her body shaking visibly.

"No! It's... j-just a trick!" Another vampire shouted unconvincingly. "He's trying to psyche us out!"

"He just incapacitated two of his allies for kicks! This is crazy!"

Snake looked annoyed. "Okay, fine. I guess I'm attacking first." The grenade went sailing through the air toward one of the midians. "You brats better put up a fight, though."

The frag grenade, which had been armed and active well before Snake had actually thrown it, promptly exploded right next to one of the vampires before it even hit the ground, eliciting a scream of pain and surprise from the undead woman and sending shrapnel into two others that were standing nearby.

"Slow! Too slow!" Snake shouted as the unharmed midians attacked. "Fight harder!"

_BLAM! BLAM!_

* * *

"-and that's why I think launching cars with catapults should be an Olympic sport," Kyle finished, crossing his arms over his chest as he nodded seriously.

Junko and Sailor Mercury sweatdropped in confusion, both of them occasionally glancing back at the smoke-filled mausoleum behind them.

"That's... ah... actually a rather thoughtful proposition," Mercury said hesitantly, "but I really think we should be focusing on the matter at hand, here..."

"Okay. Yeah, you're right," Kyle agreed, shifting the massive cylinder of interlocked weapons on his back. "...... So, do you think there's any way we can solve this problem by launching a car with a catapult?"

Junko's face darkened. "Which problem is that, again? Do you mean Ranma-kun being left alone to fight a vampire superweapon, us getting separated from the rest of the group, or the fact that we can't find the boss vampire?"

"The last one. Definitely the last one," Kyle said without hesitation.

Mercury shook her head. "I still can't pick up any energy signatures except for Rei-chan's. It appears that after being released from that coffin, she radiates enough energy for me to track her, but everything else in the vicinity is being obscured by **that**." The genius Senshi pointed up into the sky.

Kyle frowned. "That bat is obscuring the scans?" He asked, his brow furrowing as he reached for a weapon.

"No, I meant that... thing blocking out the sun," Mercury mumbled, typing away on her computer some more. "It's not a real cloud or smoke or anything; it's an amoebic energy life-form of some sort."

"What? It's alive?" Junko asked, horrified.

"In the strictest sense, yes," Mercury mumbled. "I see no indication that it has any sort of intelligence, but its energy readings are comparable with that of other energy-based life-forms I've scanned in the past, and have a definite biorhythmic pattern. And it's radiating so much power that it easily hides the relatively meager energy patterns of the vampires." She frowned as she stared upward. "What I don't understand is that while it's been expanding exponentially to cover more and more sky, it's been consuming energy at precisely the same rate."

Junko, who was rubbing her forehead trying to keep up with the Senshi of ice, looked even more confused. "Why doesn't that make sense? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me."

"It's not so much that it's unreasonable," Mercury explained, "but it provokes the question of where it's getting so much energy in the first place. Usually I'd expect an energy surge comparable to that one to be related to an incredibly powerful energy source, or perhaps a large-scale draining of all the humans in the vicinity, but none of my scans can make any sense of it. Where is it getting all its power? And more importantly, what will happen when it runs out?"

Junko whistled softly. "Wow... that's pretty deep, actually." She turned to Kyle, and elbowed the man in the side. "Hey, Commander, you getting this?"

"Nah, I wasn't listening," Kyle said bluntly, staring up at a nearby tree.

Mercury sighed, fairly used to her longer explanations being ignored or misunderstood; besides it wasn't as if comprehension would have really helped. "Well, what are you staring at so intently?"

"It's that bat from earlier," Kyle said, looking rather irritated at the small mammal as he pointed to the creature hanging from a tree branch. "Are bats' eyes supposed to be all red and glowy?"

Both women flinched back at that comment, and the bat slowly spread its wings as Kyle stared up at it defiantly.

"No, I don't believe that's usual for bats," Sailor Mercury said nervously as she stepped back, putting her computer away.

"Thought so," Kyle said, dropping the 4B Mobile Armory on the ground behind him. "Which just leaves one question." He gripped his hand into a fist. "What's a flying squirrel doing out at this time of night?"

_Thwump!_ The bat promptly lost its grip and fell flat onto the ground below.

Mercury almost joined the tiny mammal in the dirt before tugging gently on Kyle's sleeve. "That's... not a flying squirrel, Tekai-san."

"Oh. Never mind, then." He turned around and pointed toward the mausoleum. "Let's go find the captain and the others."

_Shoom!_ Junko and Mercury flinched to the side as a wave of force passed by them, and Kyle jerked to a stop suddenly, his eyes wide.

"Do not take me lightly, human," Kimiko said as she slowly grew to human form, her mantle wrapping around her as if materializing from mist.

Sailor Mercury gasped as blood spattered on the ground underneath Kyle. "Are you okay?"

"I..." the superhuman stuttered for a moment, blinking. "I honestly don't know."

Kimiko raised an eyebrow, surprised that the psionic burst didn't punch the officer's abdomen straight out of his body. "Of course this couldn't be easy..." she muttered under her breath, energy gathering around her hands.

_Clack!_ Before the vampiress could launch another attack, Kyle grabbed a lever from the armory behind him, pulling the attached machine free and turning it on the elder vampire. _Bwoom!_

Kimiko's body blurred as she phased to the side, allowing the projectile to sail past her harmlessly.

_KROOM!_ The explosion that sounded behind her caused Kimiko to wince as she felt a wave of heat across her back, and she threw her arms forward as she unleashed a pair of blue fireballs at the blond man.

"Shine Aqua Illusion!" Sailor Mercury shouted, throwing a blast of water in the path of the eldritch energies. Both vanished in a flickering burst of competing energies, and Kyle fired another round from the heavy cannon he had pulled from the 4B.

This time Kimiko's mantle spread out before her, and the shell stabbed into the delicate strip of otherwordly cloth as it wrapped around the projectile, gently robbing it of its momentum.

"THAT'S not good," Junko decided as she ran for cover amidst the gravestones.

"Look out!" Mercury shouted, leaping away herself as Kimiko's mantle tossed the explosive shell back at its origin.

_KABOOM!_ "OW!"

* * *

_Crash! Crack! Thump!_

Cyber Moon kept her eyes squeezed shut as she felt rubble rain down all around her, completely confused as to what was happening.

For one thing, there was the tornado. That had really caught her by surprise. Such surprise, in fact, that she had pretty much been the only one that didn't duck behind something when Asuka had given the word. So whatever was going on by now, she had to admit it was a stark improvement over being thrown across the length of the tomb and embedded in a stone column.

Secondly, due to her being caught in the blast from Ranma's surprise attack, she had still been in the effective range of the cyclone once it had narrowed and was no longer destroying the whole mausoleum interior. In her desperation not to get swept away, she had mostly just clung to the pillar and hoped for the best.

At some point during these trying times, she had been pried loose from the pillar, and was now being rained on with debris. She was guessing the tornado had managed to shake her free from her anchor, but she had no idea where she was, where she was going, or why she was still moving. Judging by the noise though, she was better off simply keeping her eyes closed until things calmed down.

'Hey, computer?' she thought to herself, 'can Ranma-kun use magic?'

**Scans indicate only trace energies within Unit Saotome currently identified as "magic". Earlier weather anomaly was a small-scale ion storm mimicking the conditions of natural tornado formation. Although the heat required for the reaction was supplied by Unit Mars, Unit Saotome's catalytic energy is categorized as "ki". This energy type is identical in wavelength and function to psychic or psionic energy.**

'What does all THAT mean?' Cyber Moon thought, once again exasperated that her personal cranial computer was wordier than Ami ever was. The worst part was that the computer could apparently only communicate by floating words over her field of vision; at least if it was spoken, she could get some sort of feel for the sentence and what it should mean, but seeing the unfamiliar characters scrolling in front of her eyes simply reduced it all to gibberish.

**A synonymous and simplified explanation would be that Unit Saotome can apparently create tornadoes with his mind.**

'Oh. Well, that makes sense.'

**This unit disagrees. That Unit Saotome was able to replicate such weather conditions and somehow generate a full-scale cyclone with "cold ki" violates twelve distinct physical, thermodynamic, and meteorlogical principles. The fact that Unit Saotome cannot manipulate "magic" energy wavelengths further complicates analysis.**

Cyber Moon tried to shrug, but found her arms somewhat restrained. 'Well, it doesn't really matter, as long as everyone gets out okay... Hey, did we stop moving?'

**Affirmative. Current temperature and contaminant particle count indicate that Unit Cyber Moon has departed conflict area.**

'Conflict area? What do you mean by-'

**You are outside now.**

Cyber Moon's eye blinked open suddenly, as she was pleasantly surprised to see Tuxedo Kamen standing in front of her, looking concerned.

"Ah! You're all right! Thank goodness," the masked man said, sighing in relief. "You seemed okay, but you weren't responding at all."

"Oh! Yeah, I'm fine!" Moon said, flushing slightly. "What happened?"

Tuxedo Kamen frowned. "That pigtailed fellow's technique almost blew you away along with Mars, is what happened. I saw that you were caught up in the storm and came to your rescue!"

Cyber Moon flushed more deeply. "You broke into the tornado, pulled me free, and then carried me out of the building?" She gasped, deeply impressed.

Tuxedo Kamen sweatdropped as he maintained his heroically nonchalant expression. "Well... I did have SOME help."

It was about this time that Cyber Moon finally realized that she was still being held above the ground despite the fact that her would-be rescuer was right in front of her. Craning her neck to the side, she saw that the huge Russian man was currently holding her securely under one arm while holding his cannon in the other.

"Are you able to walk again?" Rayden asked blandly, feeling a slight soreness in his arms from carrying the abnormally heavy girl while plowing through walls and flying debris. He didn't particularly care that the masked man was taking credit for the rescue when he had done little more than shout "Sailor Moon! Hang on!" but if he had to carry the girl much longer, she was going to be a serious burden in the battle to come.

Cyber Moon gulped, her elation melting away into nervousness. "Uh... yes?"

_Thwump!_ She yelped as the super-soldier unceremoniously dumped her on the ground.

"Excellent. Ensure you are more careful in the future," the gunman deadpanned as he stepped past her. "I may decide it is not worth my time to save you."

Tuxedo Kamen shot the man a glare, but said nothing to him as he stepped up to his fated lover. "Sailor Moon, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said quickly, pushing herself to her feet. "Th-Thank you, scary foreign guy!" She bowed respectfully to the gunman, who completely ignored her.

"Forget about him, Sailor Moon. We need to find the other Senshi," Kamen said. "We got separated during the tornado, but-"

"Oh! Right! Before I forget, I'm Cyber Moon now!" The blonde cyborg said, interrupting Tuxedo Kamen.

The masked man blinked. "What? What do you mean?"

"Well, I can't do the normal transformation anymore, and..." she trailed off as she suddenly felt something strange in her throat, and her cheeks swelled up the next moment as it was pushed up into her mouth.

"PWAH!" The blonde blinked in surprise as she coughed up a thick cloud of dust and dirt. "Eww! What was that?"

**Respiratory engine has been cleared of excess contaminants. Now functioning at one hundred percent efficiency. Recommend that Unit Cyber Moon initiate filtration system when experiencing similar conditions in the future.**

"Well, a little warning would be nice!" Moon suddenly snapped, causing Tuxedo Kamen to flinch back.

"Warning? About what?" Kamen asked, quite confused.

"No, I was talking to the thing in my head," the cyborg said, not noticing her fated lover twitch at the explanation. "Anyway, like I was saying, I can't turn into Sailor Moon, but I've got this neat cyborg costume instead. So now I'm called 'Cyber Moon'. Do you like it? I came up with the name myself!"

Tuxedo Kamen sweatdropped, completely at a loss for words.

Rayden, however, was not. "While I hesitate to interrupt your meaningless babbling, there are things afoot of far greater import than your name," the Russian grumbled, slipping another cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it.

Tuxedo Kamen glared at the foreigner again. "Come... Cyber Moon," he said awkwardly, turning away with a flourish of his cape. "We don't need to stand here and be insulted by this foreign brute. We should find the others and then-"

Before he could continue much further, a swirling column of darkness erupted in front of him, causing the masked man to leap back.

"What in the-" again, before he could finish his sentence, a pitch black hand emerged from the swirling energies, reaching for his throat before he could react.

_Blam!_ The hand flinched back as Rayden calmly shot a hole through its palm, and the distraction was just long enough for Tuxedo Kamen to summon a trio of roses and throw them into the bizarre appendage, impaling it and stunning it further.

"What's happening? What is that?" Cyber Moon asked fearfully as she rushed up next to Tuxedo Kamen.

**Scans detect bio-rhythmic energy patterns consistent with Unit Ran.**

"It is our foe," Rayden said simply before Moon could explain her readings to the others. "All creatures that defy God's light must be purged. It matters not which particular beast this one is."

The swirling blackness coalesced into Ran's body, and the vampire straightened as he gazed at the trio in annoyance. "How... irritating. I was under the impression that Rei would be enough to stop you, especially after I lent her my strength."

Rayden dropped his pistol as his hand went to Judgment. "I haven't time to converse with you, creature. Many of your kind awaits their end at my hand." _Thoom!_

Ran smirked as the heavy cannon fired, and raised a hand as the 80 mm. shell streaked toward him.

Almost comically, the projectile slowed to a crawl right before it impacted the vampire lord, who casually plucked the explosive out of the air.

"You've got quite a modern touch for a religious zealot," the nosferatu said, observing the shell as he turned it about in his hand. "Most of your kind comes at us with swords and crossbows and such rubbish."

He tossed the weapon behind him carelessly.

_KWABOOM!!_ "But it will take far more than this for you to escape this place alive," the vampire lord said, his fangs lengthening as the blazing explosion behind him cast a long, writhing shadow in front of him. The shadow itself seemed to grin at the warriors, a pair of crimson lights glowing from the spots in the shadow where Ran's eyes would be.

Cyber Moon gulped, but activated her combat gauntlets. "We have far more than that, don't worry. You're going to pay for what you did to Rei-chan!"

Tuxedo Kamen whipped out several more roses between his fingers as his cape flapped in the breeze. "Darkness will never triumph before the guardians of justice! So long as we are pure of heart and do not give up, you cannot win here!"

Rayden took a deep drag off of his cigarette as he kept Judgment aimed at Ran's head. "Perish, nosferatu scum."

_Thoom!_

* * *

_Clangk! Ktank!_

In the inner sanctum of the mortuary, two streaks of color flew through the air at high speed, bouncing off of the walls and fixtures and colliding with each other in bursts of flame and sparkling blue energy.

_Skssh!_ Ranma skidded along the ground after landing, and his hand went for the Jackal.

Rei slowed herself in mid-air, and quickly began drawing a symbol in the air with her finger, the digit trailing hot red fire.

_BWOOM!_ Rei barely managed to lurch out of the way as a Jackal round obliterated the energies she was assembling, and she clicked her tongue as she dipped straight down into the floor, a fiery pentagram flickering into view where she vanished.

"Where..." Ranma glanced back and forth, stretching his senses out to search for where his opponent would emerge.

Honestly, he needn't have bothered; Rei's exit point became quite obvious when a flaming pentagram appeared right under him.

"Oh, no you don't!" Ranma pointed his weapon at the circle and fired at the same time that Rei's hand emerged from the stone below, morphed into a set of fiery talons aimed to rend him apart.

_SHRAK! BWOOM!_

Tump! Klunk! The Jackal clattered across the scorched stone floor of the mausoleum, eliciting irritated and pained snarls every time it bounced. Once it stopped at the other side of the building, the corrupted pistol growled fiercely and started writhing about on the floor in protest to such treatment.

"Hah... hah... oh man..." Ranma panted heavily as he held Rei's wrists tightly, his face slightly charred. "That... that was close."

Rei would have been panting just as heavily were she still human. Seeing as how her heart didn't beat any longer, however, she instead just kneeled in front of her opponent, stunned, while occasionally glancing down between her legs at the considerable crater that the Jackal had created in the floor.

Ranma finally caught his breath, and then let go of Rei's arms. "Okay, so, are we done here? You feeling better?"

Rei blinked, totally confused. "Done? What?"

"Well, I'm hoping by now that the others managed to find Ran and start fighting him," Ranma reasoned, rubbing the back of his head, "so he probably can't concentrate on making sure you're killing me. Or at least, that's what my idea was. I don't really know how this vampire control thing works, but obviously just having you try to resist him wasn't working out."

Rei recoiled suddenly, falling onto her rear. "Wait... so... you were fighting me before... to get Ran to leave me alone?"

"Did it work?" Ranma asked, standing up. "If he's not distracted, he might just force you to fight again. You should leave now while we move in to finish him off."

The vampiric Senshi stared for a long moment before she shook her head, staring at the floor. "I... I don't understand... why are you doing this?"

"What do you mean, 'why'?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow. "If we kill Ran before he can take control of-"

"Not that! Why are you helping me?" Rei demanded, hot tears rolling down her cheeks as she stared up at the pigtailed man. "I'm already dead! Beyond saving! I'm a monster now!" She snapped. "Stop playing around and finish me off!"

Ranma blinked in surprise at the request, and then rubbed his chin briefly. "Hmmm... no."

"What do you mean 'no'? It's your job!" Rei argued, pointing to him.

"I don't want to," Ranma said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. "And Captain Takami didn't say anything about it either way."

"I'm telling you to do it!" Rei snapped.

Ranma turned his head away. "Why do I have to take orders from you?"

Rei growled ferociously for a moment at Ranma's defiance, her hands clenching into fists. "Listen, you! Your stupid pity is going to get you killed one of these days!"

"Who says it's pity?" Ranma shot back defensively, leaning over the raven-haired woman. "I said I'd take responsibility, didn't I?"

Rei blinked. "You... what?"

"Whether or not I got you into this, I'm definitely going to get you out of this!" Ranma declared. "I don't care whether you're a vampire or under mind control or whatever! I'm going to protect you, and that's final!"

Rei flinched back from the statement, and her cheeks began to heat up considerably as what little blood was in her body shifted to her face. "I... uhm... okay. But... what about-"

"Anything that comes after this can wait," Ranma said decisively, holding out his hand to help the vampiress up. "I need to concentrate on getting you out alive. Or, undead. You know, whatever."

Rei continued flushing as she took Ranma's hand and pulled herself up - which in itself was a rather silly gesture, considering she could make herself weightless at will - and then cleared her throat once she stood.

"I'm... sorry about getting mad and... well... trying to kill you," the vampiress said timidly, holding onto Ranma's hand tightly.

"Eh, no problem. I get that a lot," Ranma said dismissively, causing Rei to sweatdrop. "Besides, I can tell you were holding back, just like I was."

More sweatdrops appeared. 'Was I holding back?' Rei wondered to herself.

"Anyway, I gotta go help the others put down Ran. You should take off," Ranma said as he let go of Rei's hands and walked across the inner sanctum to recover the Jackal.

"No way!" Rei said firmly as she followed after the pigtailed man. "I'm not leaving everyone behind to fight for me!"

"But if we run into Ran, he'll just make you fight again," Ranma said as he recovered his pistol and patted the growling firearm along the slide to sooth it.

As he was trying to placate the corrupted weapon, Rei grabbed his arm, startling him.

"If that happens, then please, fight me again!" Rei said seriously, staring Ranma directly in the eyes. "If it's you, then I can do it!"

"Do... what, exactly?" Ranma asked, confused.

"Fight back with lethal force without hesitation!" Rei clarified. "It can only be you, so please, stay with me!"

Ranma's face darkened. "Oh. Okay, sure." Really, he couldn't think of a reason why it wouldn't work a second time, but honestly, he was really hoping he wouldn't have to fight Rei again. He was already fairly exhausted from the constant dodging, and he could feel dozens of light burns from where he hadn't dodged quite far enough. He wasn't really in the best shape to survive another battle where he couldn't kill his target.

Rei brightened remarkably at his acceptance. "Okay! Then we should find Moon and-"

_Chomp!_

The vampiress bristled as a sharp pain came from the hand that was still holding onto Ranma's arm, and she glanced down to see that the corrupted Jackal had sunk its fangs into her wrist.

"OW!! What the hell was that for?!" Rei screeched, yanking her hand back. Unfortunately, the grip of the Jackal's jaws were greater than Ranma's, and before long the vampiric Senshi was swinging her arm about wildly with the gun still attached to it.

"Hey! Careful! Jackal, let go of her!" Ranma demanded sternly, like a parent reprimanding a mischievious child.

"Shooouh!" The gun snarled, finally releasing Rei's hand and dropping to the ground.

"You creepy little bastard! I'm going to exorcise the living hell out of you!" Rei growled, arcane symbols etched in flame appearing around her hands as she glared at the weapon.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, there!" Ranma said nervously, snatching up the Jackal as it glared and snarled angrily at the vampiress. "Let's just calm down! You heal crazy fast anyway, right? No harm done!"

"No harm done? It bit me!" Rei shouted, holding up her bloodied hand. "And look! It's not healing fast at all!"

"Wow. You're right," Ranma said, obviously impressed as he stroked the Jackal's muzzle. "That'll come in handy when I fight the stronger vampires later!"

The pigtailed man flinched as he felt the local temperature rise several degrees, and then bigsweated as he glanced at Rei, whose eyes were a solid, bloody red as she glared at him.

"I... I mean... bad Jackal! Don't bite Rei-chan! What are you doing?" He said, bigsweating as the Jackal simply grumbled in general discontent.

"Better," Rei snapped, whirling around as she floated above the floor. "Now come on; I feel a lot of power rushing around, so the others are probably in trouble."

Ranma sighed as the vampiress went on ahead, and once again patted his possessed sidearm over its muzzle. "Maybe I should have just kept fighting her..."

* * *

"Only a few more!" Asuka shouted as a clawed ghoul swung at her, its remaining arm coming down in a clumsy vertical swing.

_Clangk!_ She blocked the rusty talons with her pistol, and then followed up with a swift kick in the ghoul's stomach that knocked it on its back, vulnerable. _Blam!_

After shooting off the creature's head, the police captain whirled about to see how the others were faring.

Tiro was faring fine, and was even now running across the length of the graveyard as a clawed ghoul lunged at him uselessly.

Uranus was doing far better, having cleaved a fourth ghoul in two with her sword while Neptune attacked the slower armored ones that would actually give the Senshi enough time to use their magic attacks.

"Deep submerge!" Sailor Neptune shouted, unleashing a blast of pressurized water and demolishing a pair of the lumbering armored ghouls.

Asuka nodded approvingly, and was about to kill off the one chasing Tiro when she saw a dark shape swooping down from the trees toward Neptune's back.

"Neptune! Look out above you!"

Neptune whirled around, and then froze for a critical moment as she saw a winged, rotting corpse diving toward her, its hands stretched out for her throat.

_Whumph!_ In the split-second before impact, Asuka tackled the monster out of the air, and both she and the ghoul rolled along the ground until Asuka managed to slam the ghoul's back into a tombstone.

_Shwwk!_ Asuka struck like lightning, unsheathing her combat knife and slicing the ghoul's neck all the way to the spine, severing the crucial nerves that even undead required in order to function.

"They can come from the skies, too! Watch yourselves, people!" Asuka barked, shaking the blood off of her knife as she stood up from her recent kill. "Yamazaki, you have a gun for a reason, dammit! Do I have to do all the work myself?"

Sailor Neptune, for her part, simply remained in place, frozen as a deep blush crept up to her cheeks.

"Hey! You awake?" Came Uranus' voice from behind her as the blonde waved a hand in front of her lover's face.

The emerald-haired woman shook her head to clear it, and then did her best to look undisturbed from almost being dive-tackled by a flying cadaver. "Yes, I'm fine, thanks to Asuka-chan. Did you SEE her? I've never seen anything like it!"

Sailor Uranus' eyes narrowed. "Oh, so she's 'Asuka-chan' now? You two sure got close awfully fast."

_BLAM!_ "Okay, I got it! On the right, it's one of the flame zombies! Tiro, back up and open fire!"

Sailor Neptune idly ran a hand through her hair. "It's not that. I've simply figured out why the Inners think so highly of these people and trust them."

"Oh, really? So suddenly you trust these people we've never met before? The ones who know all our secret identities? And invite other creepy foreign guys to fight in their battles? And own a GIANT F---ING MONSTER? Oh, and let's not forget that one of them has a possessed handgun! Why, with that kind of track record, what was I even worried about?"

_Ratta-tatta-tatta!_ "I got its legs!"

"Then what are you waiting for? Finish it off!" _Blam! Blam!_

Sailor Neptune huffed irritably. "I don't know what you're being so hostile for! That woman saved my life!"

"Saved your LIFE? Are you kidding me?" Uranus asked, throwing up her arms. "What, being touched by a flying corpse is enough to kill you now?"

"It could have had diseases!" Neptune snapped back. "BAD diseases! You don't know!"

_BLAM!_ "Damn, I'm almost out of shotgun ammo!" Asuka cursed, turning away as an armored ghoul crumpled to the ground behind her.

Tiro had stopped shooting by now, and was now observing the argument going on behind them in earnest. "You know, if they're just going to argue with each other while we do all the work, they'd better at least make out at the end."

"Tiro, stop your stupid-" Asuka suddenly stopped her default response to Tiro's lechery as something tugged at her mind. "Wait... why would they make out?"

"Lesbians do that sometimes," Tiro said happily, rubbing his hands together. "Ideally, out in the open where they can be observed."

"Lesbians?" Asuka repeated, blinking repeatedly. "Oh." Then her eyes widened. "OH." Then she winced badly. "Oh..."

"Yeah, I think you have an admirer. Well, another one, I mean," Tiro said, grinning. After all, it was no secret that he had feelings for his commanding officer, even if it was doubtful that such feelings had any origins above his waist.

"That's... really not important right now," Asuka said firmly, cocking her shotgun and chambering the last shell. "It looks like the area is finally secure, so we should move on."

"Hey, I'm not the one who needs convincing," Tiro said, jabbing a thumb at the pair of Outer Senshi.

"I hardly think you have any right to throw a jealousy tantrum!" Neptune accused. "You've done much worse!"

"Yeah, and then you get mad at me for it! So who's the hypocrite here?" Uranus challenged.

"Isn't the situation a little precarious right now to be arguing over such a trivial thing?" A third voice interjected, giggling slightly.

"Hey! You keep out of this!" Uranus growled, turning and pointing at the blindfolded woman behind her. "Wait... who-"

Asuka's breath seized in her throat. "It's Mortis! Get back! Now!"

Uranus glanced behind her, then back at the almost terminally skinny woman grinning at her. "Oh, I get it. Another vampire, huh?" She raised the Space Sword as she prepared to charge. "Feh, she doesn't look like much to me."

Mortis giggled and stretched her arms out in front of her. "I've heard that before. But before you dismiss me so easily, you should pay more attention to where you are!"

"Pff. Whatever," Sailor Uranus scoffed as she moved forward, aiming for a single, decapitating strike.

_Thump!_ Instead, the blonde ended up falling flat on her face as she found one of her legs unable to move, being in the surprisingly powerful grip of a skeletal hand reaching from out of the ground.

Mortis chuckled at the sight, tattoos appearing all over her skin as she drew more power to her.

_Ptwang! Klang!_ The figure of a bloodied, headless woman briefly flickered into view next to Mortis as Asuka opened fire, deflecting the bullets as if it was a plate of proper metal armor rather than an incorporeal aura.

"I think you'll find that your sad little toys won't work on me here," the vampiress said cheerfully as she kicked away Uranus' Space Sword. "There are many spirits gathered here, and many are upset about the violence surrounding their places of rest!"

"What, like that's our fault?" Tiro retorted, hiding behind Asuka.

Sailor Neptune leapt back as an arm jutted out of the ground, groping for her. "You won't get away!" She shouted, beginning the movements to launch her Deep Submerge as magical waters burst all around her.

"I'm not the one that should be worried about escaping!" Mortis crowed, snapping her fingers.

"Wh-What?" Neptune gasped as she felt her arms freeze, and her face paled as she found herself being held by gray, translucent figures in varying states of bodily abuse. "What is this?"

"Neptune! Hold on!" Uranus shouted, trying to kick away the skeletal hand as more limbs began to emerge from the dirt around her.

_Blam! Blam! Blam!_ Tiro swallowed as his face paled, watching as Asuka emptied the rest of a clip into the ghost protecting Mortis. "Bad. Bad. Very bad! What do we do? We can't shoot her!"

Asuka took a moment to think as she holstered her pistol, once again taking up her shotgun. "I'll find a way to break her concentration; that seems to be a good way to neutralize vampires' powers. You get that sword back to Uranus before she's swallowed up or-"

The police captain trailed off as a hand suddenly burst from the ground, and she barely managed to leap away as rotting digits closed around her ankle.

"Damn it!" The bluette cursed, dropping into a full sprint straight toward Mortis.

"Ha ha ha! And what are you going to do?" The vampiress taunted, a symbol resembling an eye appearing over her blindfold.

The ground between Mortis and Asuka burst upward, and the midian smirked as a muscular ghoul with an iron mask tugged itself free of its earthen prison.

Asuka didn't slow down, but rather held the shotgun out in front of her as she ran. _BLAM!_

Its ammunition spent, the police captain let it fall as the burrower ghoul flew back onto the ground, most of its innards having been ejected out of its back.

Mortis blinked at the turn of events, and then she grit her teeth and threw her arms forward as Asuka lunged. "HAAH!" A white, glowing phantom seemed to fly from her hands, its shadowy face moaning in agony as it spread its arms to embrace its target.

Asuka felt her heart stop for a moment as a deep, soul-chilling cold suddenly overwhelmed her, instantly paralyzing her muscles. "Ugh... uhnn..." Her legs stopped moving, and before she could do anything in response, she fell forward onto her knees, her body numb.

Mortis looked pleased, if not also a bit relieved. "Heh... a nice try, to be sure. What did you think you were going to do to me, anyway?"

A small cylinder fell from the captain's shivering fingers, and Mortis scowled.

"Ah, the garlic spray. Kimiko-sama told me about that stuff. Very clever!"

The vampiress seized Asuka by the neck, tilting her head up so that they could stare each other in the eyes. "I don't like feeding on women, and I'm not really hungry anyway. But I'll definitely have to make you suffer for killing my precious abomination!"

Then the midian noticed Tiro aiming his rifle at her. "Hmm? Are you going to try something stupid, too?" She asked, licking her lips. "I certainly hope not. You're the only one of these idiots I can have some real fun with before you die. So why don't you just stand there and wait? I'll just be a moment..."

Tiro gulped nervously, but started creeping forward. "There... There's no way... I'm just going to let you kill them!"

"And what are you going to do?" Mortis asked. "You can't stop me."

"Don't underestimate me!" Tiro said, hopping to the side as a hand emerged to grab his legs. "I'm not strong, but I'm not helpless either! Hold on, Captain! I'll save you!"

Asuka let out a long wheeze as she managed to get her voice back, working against the paralysis. "Tiro... no you won't..."

"No, I have a plan!" Tiro said, still shaking slightly as he moved away from the ghouls that were pushing their way up from the graves behind him. "I can do this!"

"Tiro... shut up," Asuka gasped, surprising both her subordinate and the vampiress holding her. "Seriously... you can't do anything. I'm not desperate enough... to use a plan of yours yet."

Tiro looked honestly surprised by that. "Uh... you're not? I kinda feel like you should be. You're about to die."

In response, Asuka whistled. It was sort of weak, given that her lungs were still numb, and only served to confuse everyone around her.

"Look out below," the police captain said softly, smiling.

_Kwoom!_ Mortis flinched as she heard something erupt from the ground behind her, and she raised her arm to shield herself as dirt and rock rained on top of her.

"What in the-" her question was cut short as pair of zergling claws stretched out for her shoulders at the same time a vicious, razor-sharp beak carved into her abdomen. "Gugh! AAHG! HYAAAAAAAAH!!"

Asuka coughed weakly as she fell to the ground, trying to ignore the bits of blood and gore that speckled her back from the carnage immediately behind her.

"Captain! Are you all right?" Tiro asked, rushing up to his superior officer and offering her a hand up.

"Uhhn... suddenly I'm exhausted," Asuka mumbled, taking Tiro's hand and pulling herself up. "But I'm not hurt."

"My arms are loose!" Neptune said, finally tugging them free as the phantoms around her slowly faded away.

Uranus also managed to pull herself to her feet, quickly scampering away from the numerous hands that were holding her down. Those hands had apparently gone completely limp, and those that didn't have sufficient rotting muscle keeping them together had fallen apart into bits of bone.

"Is everyone okay? We're going to need to move along soon," Asuka said bluntly as she started stretching, trying to get more feeling into her arms.

"Yeah, we're fine, but..." Uranus gulped as she pointed to the creature that was rapidly choking down Mortis' leg. "What is that, again?"

"That's Hunter," Asuka explained nonchalantly. "Also known as 'Plan B'."

"Hrruunh..." Hunter made an unpleasant growling noise as he finished devouring his opponent, annoyed as it slowly disintegrated in his belly.

"But what IS it?" Sailor Neptune asked, unwilling to take a step closer to the beast.

"He's either an alien, a clone, a cloned alien, or a rather inexplicable plot device," Asuka deadpanned. "I try not to dwell on it."

"Why didn't you bring him up earlier?" Tiro asked, scratching his head.

"I didn't really think of it until I saw the ghouls emerging from the ground," she explained as she drew her pistol and reloaded it. "I was wondering earlier where Hunter went; I had just assumed he saw another ghoul and wandered off to eat it. Then I remembered that Saotome trained him to burrow when left outside, so that he wouldn't keep freaking out everyone who saw him."

"Th-That's amazing," Neptune said, stunned.

"I know; I never figured Saotome would be good with animals, much less murderous warbeasts, but somehow they just get along together." Asuka shrugged.

"Ah, that's not what I-" Neptune started again, only to be interrupted.

"Look, I know we're all a bit shaken, but we can't stop here," Asuka said impatiently. "We have to find the others. There's no reason to think they got off any better than we did."

"She's right," Uranus said grudgingly, "and I doubt that Morty or whoever was the worst vampire they've got around here."

"All right, move out!"

* * *

_BLAM! Chak! BLAM! Chak! BLAM! Chak!_ Snake dashed to the side as he blew the legs off another vampire, and then hit the ground rolling as one of the women jumped for him, fangs and claws outstretched.

_Whump!_ She barely missed the American, and managed to roll into a crouch before leaping away again.

_BLAM!_ Snake grinned as the midian's headless body tumbled onto the ground, rapidly turning to dust as another empty shotgun cartridge bounced onto the ground.

"Man, I live for this stuff!" He shouted, the very picture of glee as he cocked his shotgun again.

"Not for long, you won't!" Another voice shouted, quickly darting out from behind a nearby statue and slashing for Snake's face.

_Clangk!_ As he couldn't turn his weapon quickly enough, Snake raised his gun to block the attack instead, gritting his teeth as he felt the midian's claws puncture the shotgun.

"Die!" The vampire snarled, slashing desperately at the sandy-haired man. Snake continued to block which his shotgun, holding the weapon at each end as his foe rent the gun down the middle.

_Skrak! Clang!_

Releasing the muzzle of the shotgun, and heedless of the fact that there was a considerable tear along the side, Snake fired off a shot as the midian moved into to continue his attacks.

_BLAM!_ "GAUGH!" The vampire screamed as part of the discharge blew out the hole in the shotgun's side, causing further damage to the weapon and incidentally blasting twelve-gauge shot into the midian's face.

_Thwack!_ Snake knocked the vampire onto the ground by smacking his ruined gun into it like a baseball bat, and then tossed the weapon aside as the midian struggled to get up.

"I really liked that gun," Snake mumbled to himself as he took out a fragmentation grenade and grabbed the vampire by the shoulder.

_Clomp!_ "Hmmrguff?" The vampire, which had turned to bite at the man grabbing him, suddenly found his fangs sinking into a large metal cylinder that had been shoved in his mouth.

Snake kicked the vampire away onto the ground, and then calmly tossed a grenade pin aside. "I know you can't see right now, but just so you know, I look REALLY happy."

_BOOM!_

"Ugh!" Jupiter grunted as she pushed aside the last piece of debris that was pinning her leg down, and then pulled her lower body out from under the collapsed stone that had landed on it.

"Finally! Geez!" The Thunder Senshi gasped, standing up and brushing off her legs. "I can't believe that jerk! He could've gotten us ALL killed!"

Sailor Venus simply sighed adoringly from where she was still mostly buried in rubble, stars in her eyes. "But instead he killed all of them himself! Isn't he the coolest?"

_Blam!_ Snake shot the head off the last vampire that was trying to crawl away while its legs regenerated. "Huh. That was fun, but... unsatisfying," he mumbled to himself, glancing around at the shattered tombstones and piles of dust.

"You! What were thinking?" Sailor Jupiter shouted as she pulled Venus from the debris.

"I was thinking that there was hardly enough action between five of those losers to satiate my immediate bloodlust, never mind you two," Snake answered bluntly. "Besides, you're fine, aren't you? No harm, no foul."

"That definitely qualifies as harm!" Jupiter seethed. "What if one of the vampires attacked us while we were stuck?"

"If they were that competent or dangerous, then I wouldn't have buried you in the first place," Snake said calmly, as if it were the most reasonable and obvious thing in the world.

"Why you little-" Sailor Venus quickly grabbed hold the taller Senshi to prevent her from throttling the American.

"Wait! Wait! We can't fight now! We need to find the others!" Venus said desperately as Jupiter fumed.

"Orange Skirt is right, Green Skirt," Snake said seriously, which only further infuriated the Thunder Senshi, "we have more important things to worry about than me almost killing you."

"Of course," said a new, masculine voice, "you should be worrying about ME killing you."

Jupiter and Venus gasped as a handsome German man appeared in front of Snake, his image slowly materializing until it was completely solid.

"Hello again, worthless cattle," Kliff said amiably, flexing his fingers in preparation. "I'm glad I found you before the others. There's hardly enough liquids between the three of you insects to satiate my immediate bloodthirst. I'm sure you understand," he chuckled, revealing a pair of sizeable, dagger-like fangs.

To everyone's surprise, Snake chuckled as well. "Ha! That was pretty good! I'm almost going to be sad once I smoke you!"

"Snake-kun, stand back! We'll get him!" Sailor Venus said, twirling about. "Venus Love & Beauty Shock!"

Kliff snorted as his body winked out of existence, leaving the energy blast to plow uselessly through a line of columns and gravestones.

"Where'd he go?" Jupiter asked, her ponytail whipping about as she searched all around.

Snake walked up to a statue that was close by and pulled out a small disc from one of his leg pockets. "I've fought that guy before. He's a shifter."

"A what?"

"He can teleport at will," Snake clarified as he set the device in his hand and slapped it on the side of the statue opposite himself. "Not just his body, either. The guy can set entry and exit portals, too. There are no safe spots while he's around."

"Ha ha ha!" Laughed a disembodied voice. "How astute of you! You were paying rapt attention last time!"

_Swsh!_ Snake leapt forward and rolled along the ground as a hand emerged from a portal behind him, swiping for his neck.

"Unfortunately for you, so was I! I saw where you put that bomb; you won't catch me with the same trick twice!"

Sailor Venus posed as she summoned a chain of hearts around her body. "We won't lose to you! This time he has us with him!"

"Joy. A pair of magical cheerleaders instead of heavily-armed super-soldiers. Lucky me," Snake muttered under his breath as Kliff appeared in front of him.

"Venus Love Me Chain!" The Senshi of Love shouted, sending her weapon sailing toward the nosferatu right before he vanished again.

Jupiter turned and pointed to the top of a statue behind them. "There he is! Sparkling Wide Pressure!"

Kliff shook his head sadly right before he vanished once more, letting the attack smash into his perch uselessly in a loud crackle of magical energies.

"Too slow. Far too slow," the German vampire sang, appearing behind Jupiter and swiping at her neck.

Jupiter leapt forward just in time, rolling along the ground before landing in a crouch. By that time, however, Kliff had already vanished. "He's too fast!"

_Click!_ "Yeah, I guess I really didn't make that clear before," Snake said as he set another explosive on a gravestone. "I doubt your magic is going to work here."

"Just keep firing! Something's bound to hit him!" Sailor Venus said, charging up more energy in her hands.

"That's totally not true, but you guys go ahead," Snake said as he sprinted across the clearing toward the collapsed shrine.

_Vwom!_ Kliff appeared before the American, his hands in his pockets. "Hey now, where do you think you're going?"

Snake declined to reply, instead grabbing his combat knife and slashing at the midian in front of him.

Kliff simply chuckled as his body flickered in place, instantly backing up half a meter. "My, how savage. Is this what the famed and feared gunslinger has been reduced to, now? Stabbing at people with knives?"

"Jupiter Thunder Crash!" Sailor Jupiter screamed.

Kliff, predictably, faded from sight just before the bolt of lightning rained down from above, pulverizing the ground in front of Snake. _Bwoom!_

"Hey! Jupiter, be careful! You almost hit him!" Sailor Venus complained.

Jupiter's eyebrow twitched. "Yeah, that would be just AWFUL..."

Snake, for his part, simply used the time he was given to scamper behind a particularly tall monument and plant another bomb behind it.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Kliff asked, alerting the startled Senshi to the fact that he was hovering directly over them.

"I thought you already figured that out," Snake said conversationally as he rushed to another tombstone and placed the last of the disc-shaped explosives behind it.

Kliff vanished as a beam of white light lanced upward through the sky, barely missing him.

"Although you haven't impressed me so far, I think it's time for this to stop," Kliff said seriously as he appeared before the Senshi, taking one hand out of his pocket.

"Wha-" Before Snake knew what was happening, he had dropped into the ground below, only to fall onto the ground right in front of his opponent.

"DIE!" Kliff's hand blurred as he slashed at the confused police officer, and Snake barely manage to roll away such that the elder vampire's claws raked his arm rather than his throat.

"SNAKE!" Venus shouted in horror at seeing a light fan of blood splatter across the ground. "You bastard!" She screamed, gathering energy in her hands again.

"Uh-uh-uh!" Kliff said warningly, wagging a finger at her. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You see, I've been playing it safe, simply teleporting out of the way constantly. But what this gunslinging ape probably didn't warn you about is that I can just as easily aim your own attacks back at you." He grinned savagely, and a shimmering portal appeared in front of him at the same time an identical gateway appeared behind Snake. "Or... your allies. Do you still want to continue?"

Snake winced slightly from the pain in his arm, and then used his other arm to grab a rock lying near his head. "Oh yeah? Redirect THIS!"

With that manly declaration, Snake hurled the stone at the elder vampire's head, which caused everyone else in the area to sweatdrop.

The Senshis' faces darkened as the rock missed both the portal and the target, flying a few inches to the side of Kliff's head and going over his shoulder before it bounced off of a tombstone.

"That was pathetic," the elder vampire said, honestly embarrassed just to be the target of such an attack.

_Beep!_

Kliff blinked at hearing a strange noise behind him. "Wait-" _BWOOM!!_

The nosferatu was hurled forward as flame and shrapnel pounded him in the back, courtesy of the proximity mine placed on the other side of the tombstone Kliff had unwittingly teleported in front of.

"That was INCREDIBLE," Sailor Venus said, clasping her hands together in joy.

"Don't just stand there! Shoot him now!" Snake shouted, pulling out his sidearm and emptying it into the wounded vampire.

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!" Sailor Jupiter shouted as Venus started her own attack behind her.

"Venus Crescent Moon Beam!"

_BOOM! Kazzak!_

"Gyuaah!" Kliff shouted in pain as he barely managed to jump out of the way so that he didn't catch the brunt of the attacks, instead getting knocked down again by the shock waves. "D-Damn! You won't-"

His cry for vengeance was cut off as he heard more beeping from the side, and he glanced over to see another proximity mine attached to the statue he was trying to use for cover.

_BWOOM!!_

The Senshi averted their eyes briefly as bits of dirt and stone rained down from the sky, and Venus gripped her hand into a fist. "Yes! We got him!"

"Naw, he's survived worse," Snake said irritably, taking out his last explosive as he got to his feet. This device was a rather large, thick disk that resembled a land mine, but possessed a thick metal pin and safety lever.

"What is that?" Jupiter asked suspiciously.

"Not now, okay?" Snake snapped off the pin and licked his lips as he held the device like a discus, spinning around in place briefly before letting go.

As the Senshi watched the metal disc sail into the aftermath of the explosion, they both flinched in surprise as dozens of bats suddenly erupted into the air, many of them trailing smoke.

_Pwoof!_ The disc popped open in mid-air right in the midst of the swarm, and there was a soft crackling noise as some kind of powder burst from the device and started to glow.

"You might wanna duck!" Snake shouted, clutching his injured arm close as he crouched behind a tombstone.

The Senshi, who were glad just to have a warning this time, quickly followed Snake's example as the fuel-air grenade reached its reaction temperature.

_THWOOOOOOM!_ A bright flash lit up the unnaturally darkened sky, the sound of the shock wave easily overwhelming the dying squeal of every last bat that was trying to escape.

Jupiter and Venus clenched their eyes shut at the waves of pressure and heat that washed over them, and only dared to open them again once they felt the air temperature stabilize. Once they did, a glance toward the detonation area revealed a considerable circle of scorched Earth littered with dying flames and bits of rubble from devastated graves.

Snake was already on his feet, idly wrapping some gauze from his field kit around the gash in his arm. "Ahhh... I LOVE those things," he said happily, his face beaming.

"You did it! We won!" Venus shouted, jumping to her feet.

"We won against THAT guy," Jupiter said grudgingly, "but there are still more out there. We need to get moving."

"Green Skirt's right," Snake said, tearing off a bit of the bandage wrappings with his teeth and then tucking the extra back in his supply pouch. "We can't hang around here."

"I am NOT 'Green Skirt'," Jupiter snapped. "I'm Sailor Jupiter!"

Snake raised an eyebrow. "And... what? Am I wrong about your skirt color?"

"No, but-"

"Then I fail to see the source of confusion," Snake said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I don't get hung up about you not calling me 'Lieutenant,' do I? Stop wasting my time."

As Sailor Jupiter prepared to throttle the American, Sailor Venus quickly pointed toward the mausoleum, hoping to distract her. "You guys! Hurry up! Cyber Moon needs us!"

"Actually... there IS a problem with rushing off to find more enemies," Snake mumbled, frowning.

"What? Is it because you lost your big gun?" Sailor Jupiter asked unsympathetically.

"It's because I placed a LOT of proxy mines around here," Snake said, scratching his head as he looked around the graveyard.

Jupiter blinked. "You what."

"I figured if I armed enough of them, and put them out of sight of the main combat zone, he wouldn't be able to keep track of where they all were at the same time that he was blinking around to avoid getting shot," Snake explained. "And it totally worked, right?"

Jupiter's eyebrow twitched. "Did... you forget where you placed your own bombs?"

"In all fairness, this is all really your guys' fault to begin with," Snake said, ignoring the incredulous stare he got in return. "I mean, seriously, you magical demon hunters couldn't come up with a better plan than 'arm lots of mines and hope the enemy wanders too close to one of them'?"

"Wh-What? What are you talking about? This is definitely still your fault!" Jupiter shouted, shaking a fist at the American.

Venus swallowed nervously as she tried to calm her friend down. "N-Now come on, both of you... it doesn't really matter who's fault this is..."

"Of course it does," Snake scoffed. "Naturally, it falls to the responsible party to lead the way out... five meters ahead should do it."

"You're horrible!" Jupiter snarled.

"Times a'wastin, kiddos!"

* * *

"Hrrg!" Kyle staggered to his knees as Kimiko's mantle stabbed into his abdomen, the enchanted accessory striking with an edge harder than steel.

"Damn it all, what are you? To survive this long..." Kimiko mumbled, annoyed. After a moment the mantle began to twist rapidly, picking up speed to drill into the blond's stomach.

Sailor Mercury coughed as she tried to pick herself up out of the tree she had crashed into, her hands and arms slick with blood from when she had tried to block the vampiress' attack. "K-Kyle-kun! Hold on!"

Kyle grunted in agony as the mantle started to dig further, and then quickly dropped the twisted, useless remains of his minigun before grabbing hold of the twirling mantle, trying to stop it.

To Kimiko's surprise, her weapon promptly halted, unable to move within the blond man's iron grip. "You really are some sort of monster, aren't you? I should have known..."

"Aqua Rhapsody!" Sailor Mercury shouted, launching a powerful blast of water at the nosferatu.

Kimiko yanked her mantle back from Kyle's grasp, and then callously swatted away the magical blast. "Insolence. You should have laid quietly where I left you, brat."

_Blam! Blam!_ Junko, who had spent most of the battle looking horrified, fired a few desperate rounds from behind a tree, hoping to distract the vampiress long enough for Kyle to catch his breath.

"I was mistaken to descend upon you as my targets," Kimiko mused, gathering energy in one hand as she spoke. "Surely there are more powerful or resourceful opponents to be found amongst your little band."

_BWOOM!_ A telekinetic burst more akin to a cannon blast erupted from Kimiko's hand, kicking up a wave of dirt along the ground as it streaked toward Junko.

_CR-RACK!_ The hapless redhead was flung backward into the air once the attack struck her cover, instantly ripping the tree apart and nearly doing the same to the woman's body.

Mercury's face paled as she watched Junko land a good distance away, throwing up a good bit of dirt from the force of her impact. 'It's no good... she's too strong... I can't even imagine how we've lasted this long, with Kyle taking so many hits, but if we don't get help soon, we're not going to make it!'

"Enough of this. Seriously." Kimiko thrust out her hand, and her mantle wrapped around Kyle, who was already dripping blood from several deep wounds. "If you'd just stay still I'll even make it quick. I shouldn't have wasted so much time already..."

"Sh-Shine Aqua Illusion!" Sailor Mercury managed to spit out, a stream of water and ice blasting straight for the female vampire.

With a mild snort, Kimiko's mantle swung Kyle straight into the attack, and Mercury's eyes widened as she desperately cancelled the attack.

_Whump!_ "Ah!" Kyle slammed into the genius Senshi as the magical energies dissipated, reducing the freezing ice to a cold mist.

"Tch. You're only making this harder on yourself," Kimiko mumbled as she hovered over to the pair, her mantle taking on a hardened, knife-like edge as the remainder whipped about in the wind.

"Urgh..." Mercury pushed herself to her feet, trying to ignore the ringing in her head and the two hundred pounds of man tangled up between her legs. "We... We won't ever give in! No matter how stro-YIPE!" Mercury quickly fell to the ground on top of Kyle as Kimiko's mantle slashed at her in a wide decapitating strike.

_Sssshrrrrrk..._ A memorial statue a good meter away started to move as a clean cut appeared, and the top of the stone figure eventually toppled over.

Kyle growled as he pushed himself to his feet, despite the fact that Mercury was staying low now.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't use that man for a shield," Kimiko said honestly. "He's too tough for me to kill normally. I'll probably have to drain his life-force directly, or this could take all day. Besides, don't you think it's a bit cruel?"

Sailor Mercury gulped. "T-Tekai-kun, do you have any more weapons?"

"I dunno. Maybe," the blond replied evenly. "But they're in the armory way over there, you know?"

"Indeed. You are unarmed and helpless," Kimiko said, as if she was negotiating rather than preparing to execute an enemy. "It's time to finish this." _Hwoom!_

Swirling motes of light encircled the elder vampire's hands, and both Kyle and Mercury prepared to jump away as a pair of impressive azure fireballs coalesced within Kimiko's palms.

_Swk!_ "Hm?" Kimiko raised an eyebrow as she heard a strange noise, followed by a slight twinge in her shoulder.

_Shlump!_ The vampiress sweatdropped as her arm fell off at the shoulder, the energies at her fingertips dissipating as the limp appendage hit the ground.

"That... That shouldn't..." Kimiko trailed off for a moment, confused, though not overly alarmed that she had suddenly been dismembered.

_Shlrk!_ Her eyes widened as her body suddenly split apart straight down the middle, and both halves of the vampiress collapsed onto the ground in a sudden explosion of blood.

_Sksssh!_ Sailor Mercury gaped as a redhead figure skidded to a stop in front of them, a single combat knife in her hand and a decidedly upset expression on her otherwise attractive face.

"Let's see you get up from that, bitch!" Akina shouted, her body still throbbing from the many abrasions and bruises she had gotten from the earlier impact.

Much to the psychic's chagrin, the bloodied hunks of flesh trembled briefly before floating upward and meeting once more, assembling themselves back into a full vampire.

"Chikiko... san?" Mercury asked hesitantly, having no idea where the timid and fairly useless girl had found the strength to suddenly cleave people in half.

"What is it?" Akina snapped, her knife twirling about in her fingers. "Do you know of a weak point I can attack or anything?"

"Does she have any weak points?" Kyle asked, rubbing his head. "I'm pretty sure I shot her chest out earlier, and it just grew back."

"You'll find I've transcended the petty vulnerabilities of my brethren," Kimiko said as the last signs of damage faded from her body. "And speaking of which... what are YOU supposed to be?" She asked, pointing to Akina.

The redhead snorted. "You'll pay for throwing Junko-chan around like that!"

"Wh-Why does she speak as if Chikiko-san were another person?" Mercury asked.

Kyle shrugged. "I dunno. I think it has something to do with electric shocks... or maybe Ritalin. I wasn't really listening when they explained it to me."

Kimiko frowned. "The more I fight these idiots, the stronger they become... _Sigh_..." Once more, she gathered power into her hands, and then released another burst of telekinetic force in a single tremendous bolt, like she had done to Junko earlier.

"Stay behind me!" Akina demanded, holding back a fist as the ground started to explode in a line coming directly for them.

Just as the attack reached them, Akina calmly pushed her hand forward, palm flat.

_BWOOM! BWOOM!_ The ground on either side of the three warriors exploded into the air, throwing up a considerable amount of dirt and stone but leaving Akina and the pair behind her completely unharmed.

Kimiko gaped. 'What? How could she deflect it so easily? Even that pigtailed fellow shouldn't be able to stop that level of force!'

Akina sighed and reached behind her. "Hey, Kyle, baby? Mind if I take that other knife you got on you?"

"Eh? Oh, sure," Kyle mumbled, withdrawing the weapon and tossing it to the redhead.

"You can stop my telekinesis with barely any effort, yet you rely on weapons to attack?" Kimiko mused as her mantle whipped about in anticipation of combat. "I see now. You must be a psychic. A rather defective psychic, but I can see no other explanation." She smirked slightly. While a psychic could deflect telekinesis with ease, her other, more arcane powers would work just fine.

"Hmph. How's this for defective?" The nymphomaniac asked, her body blurring into motion as she sprinted forward, passing low underneath the vampiress.

Kimiko was fairly surprised by the woman's speed, and barely turned around in time to block a punishing stab with her mantle.

"Hyah!" Akina brought the second knife around, cutting a deep swath in the vampiress, who quickly retaliated with lengthened talons swathed in blue flame.

Akina flipped away from the attack, and then launched herself into motion at the same time that Akina's form started to blur, her eyes glowing a fierce red.

_Ktwang! Ssshwk! Sknk! TWANG!_

Sailor Mercury typed away on her computer rapidly as the two combatants clashed in the air at high speed, their bodies a series of blurs rapidly colliding with each other.

"Is there something I should be doing?" Kyle asked uncomfortably. "I feel like I should be helping."

Mercury growled in frustration as her scans continued to reveal nothing. "This is impossible! That woman has no weak points, and this interference is keeping me from finding the others! I can't do anything!"

"No weak points? Don't vampires have lots of weaknesses?" Kyle asked, confused.

"Nothing that we can exploit!" Mercury groused, frustrated that she couldn't think of a way out of their current predicament besides panicked retreat. "We have no silver munitions, the sun has been inexplicably BANISHED, and I seriously doubt she's going to be phased by that silly garlic spray!"

"Oh yeah!" Kyle said, fumbling about for his jacket pocket. "I totally forgot about that spray stuff! It could still slow her down or something, right?"

Mercury shook her head. "We should find a way to signal the others! We can't beat her on our own!"

"I dunno, I heard that Seras got rid of her on his own. It's worth a shot, right?" Kyle asked, walking up to the furious clash of blades.

_Fwish!_ Kimiko's mantle slashed low as Akina leapt into the air, tucking her body into a somersault.

_Thunk! Thunk!_ Before the vampiress could draw her accessory back, both combat knives flew at her from above, stabbing into her collarbone and stomach.

_Whump!_ The nosferatu barely had time to stabilize herself in the air before Akina tackled her, the redhead quickly grabbing hold of the knives lodged in her opponent.

_Szsht! Szsht! Szsht! Szsht! Szsht!_ Dozens of sliver flashes appeared as Akina's arms blurred, slicing the vampiress apart as she ruthlessly dragged her weapons through the nosferatu's pale, smooth flesh.

"Hah!" Akina landed on the ground as her foe practically evaporated into a bloody mist, and the psychic staggered for a moment as she felt her exhaustion catching up with her. "Ahh... hah... hah... man... That was... hard... not even sure... if I still have the energy... to get with a guy after this..."

She started as she felt something tighten around her waist, and Akina gasped as Kimiko's mantle lifted her up in the air.

"You won't have the proper appendages either, I'm afraid," Kimiko taunted from behind the redhead, smirking as Akina struggled to turn around. "This has been a very consuming fight," she continued, her fangs lengthening. "I'll need a... snack?"

The vampiress was interrupted as she felt an iron grip take hold of her arm, and she turned her head to see Kyle holding her back while aiming a small canister at her face.

_Psht!_ Kimiko blinked and wrinkled her nose as the mist moistened her face.

"Gh... uh... ACHOO!" She sneezed violently in Kyle's face, who winced and tried to step back.

_Whack!_ He didn't move fast enough as Kimiko slugged the super-human in the cheek, sending him flying back onto the ground. "What the hell was that about? That doesn't even hurt; it's just really annoying!" She seethed, her face and eyes red from the irritation.

Growling, the nosferatu turned around to return to the task of consuming her prisoner... to suddenly find a hand being thrust toward her mouth.

"Gluk!" Kimiko tried to cough as Akina forcibly shoved her own garlic spray down the midian's throat, using a brief spark of kinetic force to puncture the canister before she let go.

"Hrm! Mmnph!" Kimiko's eyes watered as the toxic substance burst from its pressurized container even as it slid down her esophogus. _Chomp!_

"Ow!" Akina used a small burst of kinetic energy to loosen the nosferatu's jaws, and then tugged her hand free as the mantle suddenly went slack, dropping her. "She bit me! That bitch actually bit me!"

This fact didn't really surprise anyone but Akina, and Kyle decided to make a break for the 4B Mobile Armory while the elder vampiress was still hacking and coughing painfully.

"You _Gurk!_ little twit! _Hack!_" Kimiko cursed, trying to ignore the pain so that she could turn to mist and hopefully leave the foul liquid behind.

"Shine Aqua Illusion!" Sailor Mercury shouted, and Kimiko grimaced as the icy magic blast rocketed toward her.

_Crik!_ Unlike the previous attempts, this time the nosferatu was wrapped in ice as the attack struck home, Kimiko's face frozen in a decidedly humorous gagging expression.

_Clack! Snap!_ Kyle thrust his hand into the middle of his personal armory, and then pulled out a medium-length tube before flipping up the aiming sights.

Then the blond man turned toward the frozen midian, grinning as he released the safeties. "Bazooka!"

_BWOOM!!_ Akina and Sailor Mercury averted their eyes as the helpless undead woman was blasted into icy chunks, the pieces scattered all over the decimated graveyard.

Akina frowned. "Why did you shout 'bazooka' before you fired?"

Kyle blinked as he put his weapon down. "Why not? Everyone else gets to shout the names of their special attacks!"

"Shooting a bazooka is a special attack?" The redhead asked, sweatdropping.

"I only have one shot, so I'm pretty sure it qualifies."

Sailor Mercury frowned as she watched the chunks of ice rapidly melting away. "You guys, I don't think she's really dead yet. After everything else we threw at her, I don't see any reason to expect that that worked."

"You're kidding! What are we supposed to do, then?" Akina growled, her fists tightening around the knives in her hands.

"Unless you have any more ideas like the garlic spray, we should go find the others while we still can," Mercury explained, her expression utterly serious. "It must be devastating for you to have moved so fast with those injuries, Chikiko-san. And Kyle-kun is wounded much more seriously."

Kyle blinked as he hefted his armory up onto his shoulder. "I am? I don't feel that bad."

Mercury was about to protest to the contrary, but then realized as she stared at the muscular blond that his cuts and gashes all seemed much smaller, and the bleeding had long since stopped. "What? But... that shouldn't-"

"And I'm fine," Akina said, waving her bitten and slowly bleeding hand negligently. "Most of that crazy stuff I do doesn't actually involve physical exertion anyway."

"Wh-What? How can you-" Mercury's eyebrow began to twitch as a bright, persisting light suddenly flared behind her, and Kyle immediately perked up.

"Hey, it's a big explosion! That must be where Snake is!" The superhuman said cheerfully.

"Snake?" Akina asked, perking up immediately. "What are we waiting for? Get a move on, studly!"

Sailor Mercury continued gaping for several moments as the two police officers dashed away, and then quickly shook her head as she realized she was being left behind. "Hey! Wait! Don't leave me behind, you guys! Slow down!"

* * *

Cyber Moon's afterburners roared as she blasted across the graveyard, her ponytails whipping about in the wind as she streaked toward her target.

_Fzash!_ The energy cut a long, bright gash in the swirling darkness that surrounded Ran, and the vampire lord growled in pain as his attacker blasted onward out of reach.

_Thwip! Thwip!_ A pair of roses punched into the nosferatu's arms, and the plants promptly withered and disintegrated within the cyclone of inky black.

"Die! Die, both of you!" Ran snarled, launching volleys of crackling black energy at Cyber Moon and Tuxedo Kamen.

Moon twisted about in mid-air, her shield flickering into place as the dark missiles homed in on her.

_Boom! Boom! Bwoom!_ The cybernetic blonde grit her teeth as the dark magics hammered her defenses, and looked over to see that Tuxedo Kamen had vanished behind a shrine, evading the attack.

While she was quite concerned for her fated lover, she was also quite frightened for Rayden, who was lying in a pile of blood-stained rubble while shadowy tendrils writhed about him, digging into his body and absorbing more blood out of the Russian.

'Computer! Is the foreign guy okay?' She asked mentally, dispersing her shield to fire several plasma blasts at Ran.

**Unit Rayden Shikodan - assuming that is "the foreign guy" - is currently in stable condition, but it is deteriorating. As he is immobile and likely in excruciating pain, his combat capability is currently negligible.**

'I don't care about his combat capability! How can I help him?' Cyber Moon thought, summoning an energy blade as she closed in on Ran.

**This unit is not configured to provide tactical solutions.**

'You always say that!'

**And still, Unit Cyber Moon persists with invalid queries.**

A vein popped up on Cyber Moon's head as she flew to the ground, cutting toward the nosferatu in a wide, sweeping cut that sliced several adjacent monuments and gravestones in two.

The energy blade made its mark in Ran, too, but the cut was rapidly swallowed up and filled by the writhing darkness that curled around him.

"How long do you think you can get away with that?" Ran asked, the shadows swirling around his hand and forming the shape of a large, long-necked bird. "You will all suffer for your impudence!"

The shadow creature took off from its master's hand, releasing a bone-chilling screech as it soared into the air.

"Ah! Um..." Cyber Moon hesitated as she thought of which weapon to use. 'I must have something to use against enemies in the air, right?'

**Affirmative. Weapon profile G-7 active. Firing.** Cyber Moon's shoulder popped open, and a targeting reticule appeared in front of her as a missile slid out of her back.

"Okay, this should do it! Now..." Moon's enthusiasm dropped as the reticule simply hovered in place, failing to move over her target the way other weapons did. "Wh-What's wrong? Hurry up and fire!"

_Shooooom!_ Streams of tears ran down Cyber Moon's cheeks as the missile took off into the sky, completely ignoring the shadow hawk before the creature of dark magic plowed into her painfully.

"AH! Why didn't that work?" The cyborg shouted, flailing wildly as wisps of shadow stretched from the dark bird's body and wrapped around her.

**Lock failure was caused by a lack of adequate heat sources. The missile was unable to track desired target.**

'Well, why didn't you tell me it wouldn't work?' Cyber Moon demanded mentally as she tried to struggle free of the black tendrils.

**This unit believes tactical solutions were already mentioned in a previous query.**

"My computer SUCKS!" Moon complained as she activated her energy blade at half length, trying to cut away the shadows that were wrapping around her.

"SREEEEEEEEEEK!" With a feral shriek, the shadow hawk's wings stretched out and then curved into sharpened claws, and Cyber Moon gasped as they reached around her body to stab into her jet boosters.

"Hey! Wait! No! Don't do that!" The blonde said in a panic as warning signs started flashing before her eyes.

_Fzrt!_ The boosters promptly shorted out as they detected a puncture in the fuel feeds, and the jets let out a final burst of sparks before they died completely.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-" _THUD!_

"One by one, they all fall before me," Ran said happily, the darkness swirling in front of him twisting into the image reminiscent of a jack o'lantern's smiling face.

_Fwip! Thwip!_ Roses came at him like a series of arrows, each one falling apart into a rotten mess as they passed through the shroud of darkness.

"Of course. You're next," Ran said malevolently, raising a hand in the direction of Tuxedo Kamen, who was sniping at him from atop a memorial statue.

_Crack! Snap! Krrrrk!_ The masked man almost lost his balance as the ground beneath him began to shift, and he grit his teeth as several of the tombstones around him rose from the ground, floating in a circle around him.

Tuxedo Kamen vaulted over the first tombstone, and then rolled under the next, dashing across the battlefield as hunks of stone were flung at him from every which way.

The last statue was evaded as the masked man actually jumped onto it and somersaulted away, landing unscathed and flourishing his cape.

_BWOOM!_ The dark energy blast he didn't see coming, unfortunately. Tuxedo Kamen was flung away as the shadowy bolt of power struck him in the back, trailing smoke as he plowed through the dirt.

"Ah! Tuxedo Kamen!" Cyber Moon cried as she continued to struggle against the dark tendrils. "You creep! You won't get away with that!"

"What a silly sentiment," Ran said, turning toward the small crater the cyborg had made upon landing. "You see, this battle was decided before it began. Forces far greater than you or even I have already been set in motion."

He smirked, his fangs gleaming behind the storm of shadows. "I am destined to win here. And then my fate will bring me, and the entire race of the nosferatu, to dominance of this sad state of misery you humans call civilization. That outcome has already been decided, and there is nothing you can do to stop it."

Cyber Moon's shoulders popped open, and her robot arms emerged welding torch attachments that rapidly began burning and tearing away at the darkness that bound her.

"Humans are such pitiful creatures," Ran said conversationally as he stalked toward Cyber Moon, a smile on his face. "Everything you do is overshadowed by your own mortality; no matter how strong you are or what you have achieved, you will die. And yet, when offered the keys to immortality, to invincible, everlasting life, you turn away out of fear of the darkness! What's the point of your empty, fleeting lives, then? Why should humans rule this world?" The vampire lord demanded, standing before Cyber Moon as the blonde continued desperately carving herself free of her shadowy prison.

"It does not matter," came a deep voice from behind Cyber Moon, and she turned her head around as Ran blinked.

Rayden grunted as he pushed himself to his feet, blood dribbling down his neck and dripping off of his crucifix. "God gave this world to humans, and decreed that vile abominations such as you be destroyed, for you are a blight upon His creation," the super-soldier mumbled. "But it does not really matter."

_Shrrp!_ Rayden tore one arm free from the sharpened black tendrils, ignoring the wash of blood that only seemed to agitate the writhing shadows.

"Humans will grow, fight, and die as they always have. They will always oppose death, and the sane will always oppose the blight of vampirism out of fear and hatred. Why do you think you can change this?"

Ran snorted. "Do you or do you not see the very sun banished from the sky, zealot?"

"And for lack of sunlight, you think humanity broken?" The Russian asked, his voice grim.

_Shkrak!_ Cyber Moon paled as she saw Rayden stand up, his body in tatters as the bloody tendrils that he had freed from his arm simply stabbed into his legs, continuing to siphon away his life.

"You think this, these petty tricks and feeble sorcery, will lay low the world? Or did you think that a mere handful of your fellow parasites could do the job? Never have I seen a general stake so much on so little."

Ran's eyes flared red as the swirling darkness around him coalesced into his hands. "You can reflect on the potency of my 'sorcery' in the afterlife, fool!"

As the nosferatu was about to strike, his eyes suddenly widened, and Ran flinched back as if struck. "Wh-What?! Mortis... Mortis, no!"

Rayden immediately drew a pair of submachine guns from within his coat. "We will not fall. We will not turn our eyes from the light. Our souls be protected by His divine will, our enemies be driven before us by His wrath."

_Braap-ap-ap-ap-ap!_ The Russian began peppering Ran with bullets just as he regained his focus, and the vampire formed the darkness around him into a barrier to deflect the attacks.

"Ridiculous! Weak!" The vampire lord snarled. "How could you insects hope to overcome us? Why do my brothers and sisters die?"

"Gah! GET OFF!!" Cyber Moon shouted, standing up and trying to tug her leg loose from the black tentacles wrapped around it. The cybernetic arms over her shoulders continued to burn away at the darkness as it tried to advance, twisting around her body.

_Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!_ The cybernetic blonde yanked herself loose as several roses slashed through the tendrils still holding her, and she shot a seriously wounded Tuxedo Kamen a relieved glance.

Ran growled and dashed toward Cyber Moon, his hands forming long black talons. "You won't escape! You won't survive! You..." his eyes blinked in disbelief at about the same time everyone else noticed an incredibly bright detonation on the other side of the mortuary. "Kliff?"

"And so this conflict draws to a close," Rayden said stonily, dropping one of his submachine guns and drawing his lighter. "Back to the shadows, nosferatu." _Click!_

_BOOM! BOOM! BWABOOM! BOOM!_ A line of explosives that Rayden had scattered about earlier consumed Ran in a wall of flame, and for a moment Cyber Moon lost track of her foe as her robotic arms folded away.

"Foreign Guy-san, can you get free?" she asked as her wrist weapons unfolded and missile racks slid up out of her shoulders.

"I cannot," Rayden deadpanned, still standing in a mass of writhing shadows that entangled and tore at his legs.

_Shoom!_ Cyber Moon barely dodged out of the way as a bolt of darkness flew by her, and she frowned as Ran stalked out of the dying flames, his eyes a solid, bloody red.

"Why is this happening?" The vampire lord growled. "Victory is assured... and yet-"

"You think you're going to win because you bit Sailor Mars?" Cyber Moon shouted, pointing at her enemy. "You think your stupid vampire powers can defeat our friendship?"

"I don't give a damn about your friendship," Ran growled as several small bullets impacted his side from Rayden's covering fire. "But my powers can defeat YOU!"

_Thoom!_ "Glugh!" Ran suddenly staggered forward, a mass of blood and gore bursting from his chest. "Wh-What? Where..."

"Heeagh... hrrrum..." The Jackal growled as glowing green spittle dripped from its maw, its single eye glaring at the wounded vampire lord.

"Well, well, look who we found," Ranma said as he pulled up his weapon, Rei standing behind him. "Huh. Looks like he survived the first shot. Guess he's special or something."

"Rei-chan! You're all right!" Cyber Moon said, tears gathering in her eyes.

Rei glared darkly at Ran, but held her arms firm. Any power she summoned could be quickly turned on her friends, so she resolved to hold herself back until Ran was removed from the scene.

"What is this? Why are you together?" Ran growled, his black aura withering slightly as his body struggled to regenerate. "This... This is all wrong. This isn't what was supposed to happen..."

"I must... disagree... dark prince..."

Everyone in the area suddenly felt a deep chill down their backs, and Ran gasped as he caught sight of a bundle of rags and bandages that shambled past Ranma and Rei and steadily approached him.

"Prophet! You're here! Finally!" Ran said, looking relieved. "I n-need your help!"

"Who's THAT?" Tuxedo Kamen said as he limped over to the others.

"I... I have no idea," Rei mumbled. "I saw a few of the other vampires before I... well, before this happened, but I don't remember him."

Ranma, meanwhile, had wasted no time in moving to assist Rayden once he saw the state that the Russian was in, and was busy cutting away at the withering shadows while pulling the gunman free. "Damn, you've lost a lot of blood. Can you walk at all?"

"I will manage," Rayden said emotionlessly. "More important is that our enemy does not escape here. This 'Prophet'... I sense great darkness within him."

"Of course you do," Ranma groused. "Because we can never just spontaneously run into friendly people full of joy and handing out back rubs. No, it's always darkness."

"It is something of a trend," Rayden agreed.

"You need... MY help...?" The Prophet rasped, walking up the vampire lord.

"Nothing has gone right!" Ran claimed, standing up straight as his wound continued to slowly heal. "My inner circle has been destroyed, and the humans are closing in! Even Mars has done nothing to ensure my victory here! Guide me, Prophet!"

"Guide... you?" The Prophet said, lowering his gaze as his magic crystal whirled about his head lazily. "Lord Ran... surely you don't... think that destiny... accomplishes itself? Your efforts here... deserve nothing less... than total defeat..."

"What?! But you said I would win!" Ran growled, his fangs lengthening in irritation.

"I led you... to a powerful weapon... I blotted out... the very sun... to strengthen your kind..." the Prophet's eye narrowed. "Under these... conditions... how could you... not win? Only... your own... incompetence... is to blame... I am not... the leader... of the nosferatu... YOU are... and you... have failed."

_Thump!_ Ran collapsed onto his knees, his eyebrow twitching as the Prophet gazed down at him.

"There they are!" Sailor Mercury shouted as she spotted her allies - and Rei, who was on the edge as such - standing before a clearing in the graveyard.

"It looks like Mars is no longer hostile. That's good," Asuka said as she sprinted next to her cousin.

Ranma turned around to see everyone else that had accompanied them except Hunter approaching from behind. All looked somewhat worse for wear, being either exhausted or injured in combat, although Snake and Sailors Venus and Jupiter looked the worse off, as they were much dirtier and slightly charred.

"What's going on here?" Sailor Uranus demanded upon seeing two unfamiliar figures talking in a clearing ahead. "Are those enemies?"

"We're pretty sure, but something weird's going on," the pigtailed man answered.

"No," Ran suddenly said, his eyes flaring red as his power swirled around him. "No, I will not accept this!"

He glared up at the Prophet, and then suddenly lifted up into the air, darkness swirling around him like a whirlwind.

"How dare you, mortal, think to judge me? I treated you as an ally because you were useful to me, but if your previous counsel was truly such rubbish and you have nothing further to offer, then your only remaining use is as food!"

The Prophet snorted, utterly unimpressed. "I will not lose... to a vampire... stupid enough to fight... during the day..."

Ran blinked. "What?"

And then the vampire lord's eyes widened as he felt the gentle warmth of the sun kiss his flesh.

"Wh-What? No!" Ran shouted, sinking rapidly as the darkness that surrounded him quickly evaporated.

Everyone else stared upward as a hole that suddenly appeared in the dark barrier suddenly began to expand, causing the small beam of sunlight shining onto Ran to grow outward as the darkness disintegrated.

"The barrier is dying!" Sailor Mercury said, quickly checking the readings with her computer. "It's been cut off from its power source! It can no longer sustain its size!" Rei winced as the sunlight covered her, and stealthily moved closer to Ranma as she felt her powers wane.

"With the vampire race... all but stamped out... in Japan... I have no need... to banish the sunlight... any longer..." the Prophet rasped, stepping up to Ran as the vampire lord struggled to get to his feet. "However... my task... is not yet... done..."

"You... You'll pay for this!" Ran shouted desperately, feeling the burning pain within his chest wound with increased intensity. "You think you can betray us and get away with it?"

"Enough of... your foolishness..." the Prophet gasped, extending a hand toward the nosferatu.

_Vwom!_ A magic circle flickered into existence underneath Ran, and numerous jagged runes appeared around the circumference and started to rotate around the greater circle, which itself resembled an eight-spoked wheel with spikes.

"Wait, what's happening here?" Sailor Venus asked, taking a step back.

"I don't know, but I doubt it's good for Boss Bloodsucker," Akina said, chuckling lightly.

"Wait! Please!" Ran shouted as the energy was sapped from his legs, causing him to fall to his knees. "Listen to me! Prophet! There is still a way! I still possess much power! With your help-"

"Your power... will be the wine... of my masters... lurking in the Immaterium... my latest gift... to Chaos..." The Prophet's crystal began to shine brightly in a cascade of colors as it trembled in the air above his head. "Vampires have... a very strong... psychic presence... their souls... tainted... yet rich... a feast... for the daemons... of the Warp..."

"Please! Rei!" Ran cried desperately, falling onto his side as he reached out toward the vampiress. "Help me! I'm your only chance! You think they will let you live? You think this world has any place for us?"

Rei raised an eyebrow as she held out a hand. "Us? Even now, you're still trying to box me in with you pathetic monsters?" She closed her hand into a fist and then turned her thumb down. "Go to hell, Master."

"GEEYAAAAAAAAH!!"

The Prophet stepped back as great torrents of blackness suddenly burst from the ground beneath Ran, seeping upward into the sky.

"Ah hah... so much... so much power..." he whispered, watching as the darkness swirled together in the sky above, creating a black, inverted whirlpool as that section of sky began to darken once more.

"Hey, Rags!" Asuka shouted suddenly. "Are you almost done here? We have a few questions for you!"

"Can't we just blast him?" Sailor Uranus asked.

"Well, although he apparently DID help the vampires, I think killing their leader might make up for that," Cyber Moon said uncertainly, scratching her head.

The Prophet seemed to ignore the warriors behind him as he staggered forward into the circle. "Yes... it is... time... at last..."

He fell to his knees, and several of the assembled men and women behind him flinched as parts of the bandage wrappings bulged and tore themselves apart.

"What the HELL is that?" Sailor Jupiter shouted, her face darkening as a pair of giant fleshy fins tore out of the Prophet's back. "What's going on?"

"Ha ha! Yes... Yes! Thank you! Thank you, Master!" The Prophet screamed to some entity not present as his body swelled further, ripping apart his ragged clothes and the other wrappings.

His face elongated and hardened to form a curved beak at the same time his fingers grew into hawk-like talons, and as his body continued to contort and grow, feathers began to sprout all over as mystical, colorfully woven tapestries grew to clothe him.

"This energy... it's definitely daemonic in origin," Sailor Mercury said grimly.

"Hold your fire, people," Asuka said calmly, stepping to the head of the group.

"Ahh! Yes... it's complete! At last!" The Prophet gasped, his voice turned from a hoarse rasp to an echoing screech as he felt the strength coursing through his new body.

His crystal glowed brightly as it hovered above, and with a gesture of his talons, it turned into a massive staff nearly as tall as he was, and capped by an even bigger iridescent jewel.

As he stretched out his new wings, the newly ascendant daemon turned toward the forces behind him.

"After all my work and sacrifice, at last the Changer of Ways has blessed me! Behold, the fruit of all my suffering and scheming!" The Prophet crowed, sparks of pure energy flaring between his talons. "I am a Lord of Change, the greatest of Tzeentch's servants!"

"That's... uh... great. I guess," Asuka deadpanned. "And what do you plan to DO, now that you're a giant magical vulture?"

"Ha ha ha ha..." the daemon's echoed caused everyone in the vicinity - save Akina, who was too strong psychically - to wince from hearing the noise bounce around in their minds, amplified. "Fear not, humans. As I once said to my... late master, I am but a servant to the fates. I seek to do you no harm... for the moment."

The Lord of Change's beak twisted into an avian imitation of a smile. "You will all play a great part in the coming conflict."

Tiro blinked in surprise. "Wait... ALL of us?"

"Not you," The Lord of Change hissed, which made Tiro feel somewhat disappointed and relieved at the same time. "... Not you either," the daemon amended, pointing to Tuxedo Kamen.

"HEY!"

"So what you're telling me," Asuka interrupted, "is that you've seen some kind of spooky future vision, or have some plan from your ultimate master, and we're important parts of it? That's kind of sad."

The Lord of Change raised its head. "Oh?"

"I mean, considering that only one side is going to leave this place," Asuka continued, making a hand signal behind her that had all the DAPC officers raising their weapons, "isn't it depressing to know that we're a more vital part of your master's plan than you?"

The Lord of Change backed up a step, its eyes narrowing. "You really think to fight me? After I said I would spare you?"

"Yes, and what a generous offer you make us while surrounded by our guns and half a dozen magical girls," Asuka drawled. "Now either put down your giant staff and surrender, or we're going to decorate this whole graveyard with your shiny new feathers."

"Insolence..." the daemon growled, flapping his wings as he took to the air. "I will-"

Asuka didn't give him any more time to talk, throwing her arm forward. "Open fire! Try to shoot off his wings!"

"Hah!" The Lord of Change held his staff before him, and the storm of incoming bullets deflected uselessly off the barrier as he slowly continued to gain altitude.

'Strange. She... She is right,' the daemon thought to himself as a few magical attacks pummeled his shield, weakening it considerably. 'Although these humans feature prominently in Master Tzeentch's plans, I have received no further orders from him! Could it be that I've reached the end of my usefulness?'

His eyes narrowed as he watched the DAPC officers scatter below him, trying to catch him in a crossfire and get by his shields. 'No. How can that be, right when I've attained daemonhood? This must be a test! Yes, a test! If I can-'

"Jupiter Thunder Crash!"

The daemon's thoughts were interrupted as a bolt of lightning lanced straight down from the whirlwind of darkness above, slamming into him and shattering his concentration as electricity seared his body.

_BWOOM!!_ The winged daemon was then sent plummeting to the ground as a round from Judgment's cannon slammed into him, bypassing his defenses.

"Yeah! Good shot!" Sailor Jupiter cheered, giving the Russian a thumbs-up as she grinned.

Rayden's entire body trembled for a moment as the recoil threatened to cause his legs to buckle. "I am reaching my limit. The vampire lord did considerable damage before he perished."

Jupiter's expression grew serious. "Just hang in there, all right? We're going to get through this!"

Honestly, she was now fairly worried about the Russian; because he always wore the same mask of indifferent determination, she had easily dismissed the fact that his legs and arms had been badly shredded, and were still bleeding slightly as he fought to hold up his enormous weapon.

In fact, enough of his coat had been torn away to reveal a tattoo printed in blocky black font on the back of his left shoulder: a simple number, consisting of "091".

'Huh. Kind of an odd tattoo to get. Seems kind of familiar, too...'

_THOOM!_ A shock wave of force blasted outward from the Lord of Change as he bounced to his feet, throwing aside gravestones and monuments along with a prodigous amount of dirt.

"The power of Chaos is at my fingertips!" His voice boomed, the staff floating in the air as spheres of energy appeared around him. "None may face me and live!"

"Up here, Tweety!" Akina shouted, leaping off of a tree branch and diving into the greater daemon like a comet.

_SSSKRK!_ The energy bolts flew in a series of wild, desperate arcs as Akina threw the full might of her telekinetic powers into a long slash. The spheres of power promptly destabilized and shattered, and the Lord of Change was forced back from the blow, unhurt but off-balance.

"World Shaking!"

_BWOOM!_ The daemon managed to block the shock wave attack by plowing his staff into the ground, though the immortal creature grew more irritated as the officer's constant covering fire started to penetrate his defenses.

_BLAM! BLAM!_ The Lord of Change lurched forward as Ranma unloaded his Jackal - no longer possessed, Ranma noted - into the daemon's back, and he launched a quick wave of force in that general direction that barely missed Ranma as the pigtailed man leapt away.

"Deep Submerge!"

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!"

"Minigun Barrage!"

"Tekai-kun, really, you don't need to shout anything when you shoot at somebody."

The greater daemon screeched in pain as the magical bolts tore into him, and parts of his body started to break away as his grasp on his power began to wane.

"Moon, get above him and finish this! Somebody slow him down!" Asuka shouted.

"Shine Aqua Illusion!" Mercury shouted, firing a wave of ice at the daemon that caught its legs as it tried to take to the air again.

"Venus Love Me Chain!" A stream of hearts wrapped around the greater daemon, entangling its wings and keeping it grounded even as the massive avian smashed apart the ice holding it down.

_Clack!_ Cyber Moon's arms split apart, revealing a pair of glowing yellow rods that crackled ominously as she started the charging procedure for her disruptor cannons, pointing them straight down at the winged monstrosity.

"So, for the victory part tonight?" Snake asked as he walked up next to Kyle, "I was thinking lasagna and then CAKE. With a little wedding cake guy on top, laying on its back with a pin in its chest."

"Nice," the blond said approvingly.

_SCCREEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!!_ The Lord of Change's final death screams were lost in the unyielding screech of Usagi's disruptor weapons, and everybody near the point of impact averted their eyes as the blast blew out a wave of dust and dirt.

"Was... Was that it?" Sailor Neptune asked, stepping away from the massive chasm where Cyber Moon had fired.

Ranma approached the edge of the blast zone cautiously, and sweatdropped once he saw that the beam had drilled a massive shaft straight down. He couldn't see the bottom, but the hole was about three meters wide, and an almost constant stream of warm gases wafted up out of it.

"Well, it's a little deep, but it's not a bad grave," he said, smirking as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe we could carve something on a rock for him, too? 'Here lies the Prophet. Finally achieved lifelong dream of turning into a giant monster bird. Never achieved lifelong dream of living as one.'"

"I really would have preferred he surrendered," Asuka said, sighing. "There are still quite a few answers I'd like to have."

"It is not my intention to spoil our victory here," Rayden said, using Judgment as a crutch as he staggered over to the police captain, "but is there not one more midian that needs to be purged?" He not-so-subtlely glanced over at Rei, who was being tackle-hugged by a blubbering Cyber Moon.

Asuka frowned deeply, and then shrugged. "I don't have an easy answer for that. It may seem hypocritical to try and save her when we've barely hesitated to kill so many others... but what can I do?" She smiled softly as she put away her sidearm. "She was a casualty here, but one that might be salvaged. I'm willing to give Sailor Mars another shot at choosing her own fate."

Rayden was silent for several seconds. "I see. Perhaps this is best," the Russian mumbled.

"Hey! Watcha talking about over here, looking so gloomy?" Sailor Jupiter demanded, slapping Rayden on the back as she appeared and not noticing as the man's body shuddered from the pain. "Cheer up! We won!"

"Victorious or not, I must dress my injuries," Rayden mumbled weakly, trying to stagger away.

"Oh, no you don't! You're coming with us!" The ponytailed girl said, suddenly grabbing the gunman's bloodied arm and pulling it over her shoulders so that she could help hold him up.

"Yeah-ah! Victory party at the HQ!" Tiro cheered.

"Just to set the record straight, I never hurt anyone who was on our side, ever," Snake said loudly as he dashed past Tiro. "Race ya to the cars!"

"All right! Fine! I'm sorry too!" Rei shouted desperately as she tried to pry Cyber Moon off of her. "Let go already, Meatball Head! Everyone's leaving!"

"Do you feel up to a bit of celebrating?" Sailor Neptune said to Uranus, passing by the pair of transformed Senshi.

"That depends; do you feel up to grinding yourself against the police captain all night?" The blonde replied, her eyes narrowing.

Neptune blinked repeatedly. "Wait... was that a question, or an offer?"

"MICHIRU!"

"A party sounds like a nice idea," Akina said wearily, "but what a gyp. With all these new chicks, there's almost twice as many girls as guys! We need some new testosterone around here!"

"There is that masked dude," Kyle offered, jabbing a thumb behind him.

"Really? Where?" The redhead asked, perking up.

"Over behind that shrine, rolling around in the fetal position," the superhuman clarified. "I think he got shot somehow."

"WHY?! WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?!"

* * *

"And so dusk falls upon the great vampire uprising, and the black souls of Ran and his damned covenant are banished to the underworld at last."

Kimiko's voice was neither jubilant nor sorrowful as she walked down the Tokyo streets toward Ran's apartment penthouse, her mantle blowing gently in the late afternoon breeze.

"I wonder how many vampires are even left in Japan? I've seen no indications that the ones that gathered at the warehouses survived."

To Kimiko, the near-extinction of her species within the country was neither a source of great sadness nor pleasure, but rather a fact to simply be accounted for. While Ran had found great joy in unlife, Kimiko's state of being was one of dull acceptance. She accepted what she was and what she had to do, but there were very few things that could enthrall her to the point of emotion.

Of course, one of them was the abnormally tasty blood of a certain police officer, and honestly, she desperately regretted leaving that behind.

'My unlife, dreary and empty as it is, is still preferred to the unknown void that lays beyond the veil,' the midian thought as she gazed at the horizon between Tokyo's towering buildings. 'I could not possibly risk fighting the more competent of the DAPC's warriors, much less the entire battle group.'

"The sun will fall soon. I really am somewhat disappointed that the darkness enshrouding the planet dispersed so quickly after it appeared. It would have made things far more convenient."

With that complaint still on her lips, she turned the corner.

Kimiko was fairly surprised to see traffic cones and police tape surrounding the entire block dominated by Ran's apartment complex, completely devoid of people. "What? That's strange..."

Pushing aside one of the flimsy fold-up barricades, Kimiko walked up to the front door, frowning as she saw a notice of condemnation posted there.

"What's this about? A bomb threat?" She asked aloud, rolling her eyes and tearing the note off. "I don't have time for this nonsense..."

Entering the building, she found every indication that the structure had been evacuated during the day, with several doors left open to reveal that the other apartments had been rapidly emptied of everything of value.

Everything still worked, however, so Kimiko entered the elevator, inserted her key, and then pressed in the code that led directly to the penthouse.

"Hmmm... I see..."

Upon reaching Ran's complex, it was fairly obvious that the room had been visited since she had last been there. It wasn't anything as obvious as furniture being moved or electronics stolen, but objects had definitely been shifted out of place, especially around the desk and bookcase.

Also, there was a wrapped present on the floor next to a pile of swept up vampire dust. That was something of a clue.

Atop the box was a small paper card, and Kimiko gently picked the card up and opened it, making sure there were no wires or bulges that could be a trigger of some sort.

"To: Children of the Night," she read aloud, looking annoyed, "Sorry about the mess we left behind. We made sure to sweep up as much bodyguard as we could, but you have a very thick carpet and we figured using a vacuum cleaner to gather bodily remains was kind of messed up. As an apology, please accept this gift. Best Wishes Until We Hunt You Down and Destroy You All, DAPC. PS: It's totally not a bomb. Honest."

A vein popped up on Kimiko's head as she finished reading the note.

* * *

_Clop!_ The window on the side of the penthouse opened up, and Kimiko flung the package outside as hard as she could.

_BWAKOOM!!_ The vampiress grit her teeth as the explosion caused the window next to her to shatter, blowing glass shards into the room and scattering them all over the floor.

"Idiots. And Ran's an even worse idiot for losing to them," Kimiko seethed as she turned toward the desk.

"I just need to gather his account information and then I can leave this place and all its bad memories behind."

Ran had an extensive fortune from his occasional business dealings, which usually involved killing someone important and taking their assets, or hypnotizing humans into making simple and extremely costly business deals with him.

As for Kimiko, though vampires rarely wanted for money, she had no intention of camping from here on out, nor did she want to have to use the same methods for acquiring cash that Ran used. Hypnosis was not her strong suit, and killing the rich and powerful attracted far too much attention for her tastes.

"Here's his account information," she mumbled, pocketing the proper documents. "Now if I remember correctly, he also had some petty cash hidden away in here..."

She shifted through the papers in the drawers, and then opened the cabinet above the desk surface.

"Gwah!" The vampiress jumped backward as she saw a block of plastic explosives attached to the inside of the cabinet door, along with a trigger mechanism that she was completely unfamiliar with.

"Wh-What is th-this? Another one?" She stuttered, backing away into a gas fireplace.

_Clunk!_ A clock that had been placed above the fireplace fell onto its face as she nudged it with her elbow, and Kimiko's face went white as she saw a small explosive charge pressed to the back.

"H-How many bombs did they put here?" The nosferatu asked, her voice shaky.

It was about that time that thirty-two distinct detonator triggers began beeping as they began activating their various firing charges.

Kimiko sighed, slumping onto the floor. "I really hope vampiric mind control doesn't work in the afterlife... I don't want to work for Ran anymore..."

_BWOOOM!! BWOOM!! KABOOOM!! BWOOOM!!_

The apartment complex shook considerably as the topmost apartments were nearly vaporized by a rapid string of explosions, briefly lighting up the sky before a shower of smoking debris and flame rained down onto the streets below.

And so ended that turbulent day as the sun finally sank below the horizon, finally allowing true nightfall to grace the weary city of Tokyo.

* * *

Vampires dusted: 13  
Vampires absorbed into the Immaterium to feed daemonic powers: 368  
Ghouls smashed: 41  
Senshi corrupted: 1  
Graves desecrated: 90  
Major structures heavily damaged: 2

End Chapter 11 


	12. Red Awakening

"It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized."  
- Aristotle

"You think our job is hard? All we have to do is shoot people and get shot at. Who I feel sorry for are the guys in charge of getting us to stop."  
- Kyle Tekai

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh. This chapter features prominent Warhammer references, specifically of the Chaos variety. You don't need to know all the particulars to enjoy or understand the story, but a few hours on Wikipedia can explain quite a bit if you're curious.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **computer readouts**, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 12  
Red Awakening  
*****************************************************************************

It was a bright, clear day in a newly rejuvenated Tokyo that saw a pair of private detectives chugging along with the morning traffic as they made their way to the local doughnut shop.

Business was brisk for detectives nowadays. The older of the two men, an ex-CSI officer in his forties named Kouno Wachizu, had just been asked by a friend of his to try and locate her teenage son that had gone missing over a week ago, and he'd turned up precious few leads.

A case without any good trails was common. Unfortunately, jobs involving inexplicable disappearing teenagers were also becoming common. Not to mention increasingly bloody.

There was a day, Kouno recalled, when such cases involved simple runaway cases or, at worst, a young girl getting entangled with forces beyond human comprehension and being conscripted by arcane powers to save the world. Those were the good old days.

His last case had led him to the pile of rubble that used to be a dance club before it had been bombarded with artillery. Tokyo had never been a boring city, but such things were enough to rattle even a hardened old man like himself.

And Kouno couldn't afford to waste too much time on cases that went nowhere, even if they were for friends. After the sky had briefly and inexplicably been blanketed by an enormous pall of darkness that had, for a few moments, encompassed the entire world, people had become a lot more nervous and were being far more responsive and sensitive. Over half the cases he had gotten in the last few days had been cancelled as the concerned parties admitted to panicking when their loved ones were simply staying out past curfew or out of contact due to a dead cell phone.

"It's weird, isn't it Neida? A week ago we had artillery firing on the city, buildings being bombed, and the world sheathed in darkness... and now it's all so calm, like nothing ever happened."

The other man in the car, a much younger one that was constantly taking and observing photographs with some top-model digital camera, nodded absently. Neida Honshou almost never spoke unless he was asked a question. It was nice in some ways but made conversation pointless.

"Well, I suppose to other people it's like nothing's ever happened. God knows I have enough paperwork to remind me," the detective mumbled as he turned the corner. "But still, this all just seems wrong, somehow... something big has happened, and things have changed. The fact that everything **seems** the same has me worried."

Seeing that the parking spaces in front of the shop were all full - no surprise, at this time of day - Kouno checked for police cruisers and then double-parked near the entrance as soon as he confirmed there were none.

He stepped out of the car, and Neida did the same on the other side. "After we get something to eat we should check with Misato and see-"

"HALT, EVIL-DOERS!!"

Kouno and Neida flinched, their hearts leaping into their throats as a voice boomed from behind and above them. "Wh-What? Who-"

"Traffic laws are made for the safety and convenience of ALL people!" Standing atop a streetlight overlooking the shop stood Usagi, posing splendidly in her trademark blue DAPC body armor and non-regulation matching skirt (Junko's work, of course). "For your callous and selfish disregard for the public welfare, you will NOT be forgiven! I am Tsukino Usagi, for minor traffic justice, I will punish YOU!"

There was a slight whirring noise as Neida took a picture, probably just as a reflex; otherwise the two men were stunned by the display.

"Uh... well..." Kouno glanced over at the car, then up to the unreasonably angry young woman. "Couldn't we just... you know... move it?"

Usagi straightened and planted her hands on her hips. "Very well! For today I will overlook your vile misdeeds and let you off with a verbal warning! But should you ever-"

The cyborg was cut off by the squeal of tires as the detectives took off down the street. Frowning, she immediately switched on her targetting computer and mentally requested a velocity tag on the vehicle as it accelerated.

'Rising... rising... almost... ah, okay, I think they're slowing down.' Usagi relaxed as the car was forced to slow down to re-enter traffic, barely keeping it below the speed limit and barely saving its occupants from another lecture.

"Now that's an interesting way to cut down on paperwork," Ranma mumbled as he stepped out of the doughnut shop carrying a stack of three large boxes; containing enough fried bread and sugar for two ordinary police departments, when split between the two eating machines that were Ranma and Usagi (literally, in Usagi's case) it was just enough to keep the pair from fighting each other over the food.

Neither one wanted that. Usagi didn't like fighting, after all, but tended to lose herself in the carnal whirlwind of sugar consumption. Ranma, for his part, didn't like hot, searing plasma, and tended to lose important organs when faced with a storm of overwhelming force and heat.

Usagi hopped off of the streetlight, her booster jets bulging up out of her back and pushing up special hinged panels in the back of her armor as she slowly lowered herself onto the ground below. Seras had been working a lot lately, and had managed to come up with a custom armor design that would allow Usagi to use some of her more common modules while wearing the armor vest, and also making the armor resistant to the intense heat that some of those modules generated.

Most wondered why she even bothered with the vest, as it couldn't really protect her against anything strong enough to actually damage the cyborg, but she was still playing Cyber Moon as her superhero identity, and that meant that she needed a regular uniform for her civilian identity that wouldn't stand out.

That she would stand out anyway using booster rockets and mini-missiles obviously hadn't occurred to her.

"Have you given a look through the DAPC operations handbook yet?" Ranma asked, walking along next to Usagi as she ferociously attacked the doughnuts.

The blonde shook her head as she swallowed the first one, going for the chocolate and sprinkle-covered ones first. "No, not yet. Is it that important?"

Ranma thought that over as he took a maple bar and destroyed it in two bites. "Not most of it, no. I mean, you've done plenty of fighting monsters and you have more tools that the rest of us." Of course, the whole POINT of the handbook was to allow officers to use their tools more effectively, but Ranma Saotome, genius of improvisation and adaptability, could easily sympathize with the young cyborg. "But you should definitely read the section on keeping Snake from killing you."

Usagi blanched, but managed to continue eating nonstop in a truly heroic feat of appetite. "But isn't he on our side?"

"Hey, if you're willing to trust your life to a technicality like that, fine. Your skin can block shrapnel. And hopefully, anti-material rifle rounds." Ranma looked at the girl dubiously. He had never been struck by an anti-armor rifle - thanks only to considerable effort on his part - so he didn't know for sure, but Usagi didn't seem much tougher than a light APC to him.

"I don't understand why everybody's so mean to Snake!" Usagi grumbled in-between doughnuts.

"Well, we don't understand why you're not terrified of him, so I guess we're even," Ranma mumbled, opening a small carton of milk and gulping some down. "He did shoot you in the head once, after all."

"That was my fault, though!" She protested.

"Most people wouldn't be so understanding," Ranma mumbled, picking up a sugar doughnut, "or, you know, ALIVE."

Usagi rolled her eyes. "For all of everyone's complaining, I've never heard of Snake actually shooting someone on his side." She hesitated. "Well, besides me, I mean."

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "You haven't?" Seeing the blonde shake her head, he pressed a little further. "When was the last time you saw that guy in the mask and top hat?"

"Tuxedo Kamen? I haven't seen him since the fight in the mortuary," Usagi said. Now that she thought about it, she had almost forgotten about her destined lover entirely ever since joining the DAPC. So much had happened to her in such a short span of time that her most recent break-up with Mamoru had simply slipped her mind. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Forget it," Ranma said. If Usagi wanted to pretend Snake was a sane and sensible human being, hey, who was he to stop her?

Usagi polished off the last of the doughnuts, her robot arms unfolding from her shoulders to shovel them into her mouth at a rate that matched Ranma's. "_Gulp!_ Ah, those were good!" Undoing a strap on her side, she peeled open the front plate of her body armor and pulled her shirt up under her breasts, her stomach/fridge opening. "Ranma-kun, could you get us some milk?"

Feeling somewhat amazed that Usagi had adjusted so well to being part appliance, the pigtailed man reached into her body and started searching through the bottles he could find. "Uh... it looks like there's nothing but liquor in here, actually."

"What?" Usagi frowned cutely. "Dang it! Who keeps doing that?"

* * *

Ami frowned in annoyance as she drank the last of her milk, pushing the empty container aside once she was done with it. "I was really under the impression that Usagi-chan would be around the HQ more often. It seems to me that she's packing an awful lot of firepower to be patrolling the city looking for traffic violations and purse-snatchers."

After finishing her complaint, she went back to typing away at the Mercury computer, which was displaying a number of energy wavelengths as rapidly quivering lines rolling across a moving grid.

Across the table from her, Kyle shrugged. "Well, the captain thought it would be fine since both she and Ranma can get around quickly without a vehicle."

"I understand the tactical implications, but still," Ami mumbled, rubbing her forehead.

"So, what are you doing again?"

Ami frowned at her computer display. "I'm searching for Sailor Saturn," she explained, "and having bloody little luck with it."

The Senshi hadn't told the DAPC any details about Hotaru's disappearance, seeing how it was their problem and out of the DA's jurisdiction; though Usagi felt sure that the police officers would have offered to help if they could, Ami figured there was precious little they could do, so there was no point in dumping bad news and new concerns on them.

Well, that, and Haruka seemed more suspicious than ever about the DAPC's apparent alliance with the Senshi. Oddly enough, Michiru's opinion had softened considerably, and the aqua-haired woman had even made a few trips to the station to visit on her own. Ami felt that there was something significant hidden among these facts, but put it aside as unimportant for now.

In fact, the only real reason Ami was doing her search at the DAPC headquarters was to avoid Luna and Artemis. Luna in particular had been insufferable ever since hearing about the vampire incident and Hotaru's disappearance, and the only way to keep the feline advisors quiet was to either avoid them or stick around people they didn't trust. The work Ami was doing was important enough that both measures seemed warranted.

Kyle eventually spoke up again after a few moments. "So how are you searching for her? You looking for notices on the Internet or something?"

Ami shook her head, letting the blond man draw her out of her thoughts; she had spent so long endlessly grinding data at this point that she was glad for the distraction of having someone to talk to. "No, I'm fairly certain that the Internet wouldn't have the information I'm looking for."

"Not even Google?"

Ami smiled slightly. "No, not even Google. This computer is capable of scanning local energy patterns and detecting Silver Millennium power signatures. I'm trying to put together the data from that."

Kyle didn't know what any of that meant, so he decided to move the conversation along. "So did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yes and no," Ami said, sighing wearily. "Each of the Senshi have a connection to the Ginzuisho, and that wavelength is secure and stable, so I'm reasonably certain Saturn is neither dead nor dying. But no matter what I try, I can't track the source of the wavelength. And the other data I have is just confusing."

She hit a button on the Mercury computer and then turned it around for Kyle to see. "Saturn was last detected here, around Okinawa. The energy signature is so faint that I can't even get a precise reading from where she used to be. After she disappeared, I found another burst of energy from a teleport that Saturn apparently attempted on her own. Luckily the Mercury computer automatically scans and records such things on its own, so I don't have to worry about faded energy signatures..."

Kyle zoned out as Ami continued speaking, doing his best to look concerned while the blue-haired girl went into further detail. He was concerned for the apparently missing Senshi, he really was, but his specialty was taking impacts that could smash steel and carrying things too heavy for most industrial machines. He didn't see any way he could help Ami make sense of magical energy waves, or whatever she was going on about.

"... no matter how I calibrate it, I can't make any sense of the signal resonation," Ami mumbled, massaging her forehead. "Not only can I not lock onto where Saturn is, I can't even pinpoint where she was or where she was going, and the worst part is that I can't even figure out why. It could be jamming, a spell failure, hell, I wouldn't even rule out a computer virus at this point!" the bluette complained, slumping back in her chair.

"Oh. That's... rough," Kyle said cautiously, silently appreciative of the way Ami had concluded her difficulties in terminology easy enough for him to understand.

"Yeah, it is," Ami grumbled, "but I have to keep at it. So far the kooky divinations haven't had any luck, and that means it's back to good old technology. Which means everybody's counting on me."

"I see..." Kyle mumbled, rubbing his chin and trying to think of a way he or anyone he knew could assist the Genius Senshi.

After thinking failed him (as usual), Kyle shrugged. "Hey, wanna play Guilty Gear?"

Ami's head shot up immediately. "What version?"

"Accent Core, on the PS2," Kyle answered, smiling.

"Dibs on Slayer."

* * *

Seras Tuko yawned as he took the elevator down into the sub-levels, and then glanced down at the nearly-empty bottle of brandy in his hand.

"Why is it that **I** have to spend all day working while Kyle plays video games with the captain's cousin?" The drunk mumbled irritably, swaying slightly. He had spied the pair on the way to the elevator, laughing it up as they discussed which video game characters had the silliest powers. There had been some program running on the computer on the desk, but Seras had no idea what it was for. Judging by the data running wildly across the screen, the program was just repeating the same data on infinite loop, indicating that a psionic energy wavelength had intercepted and redirected a materialization particle codex somewhere. Whatever THAT was all about. He would have asked what kind of stupid program just kept repeating such meaningless data over and over, but decided that if it was meaningless enough for Mizuno to put it aside for her silly games, then it certainly wasn't important enough to take up HIS time.

The elevator completed its trip to the second floor of the sub-level, and Seras continued on to the second vault cell block. While this area used to be cluttered with old storage crates and unidentified wreckage from ancient shrines and junked space vessels, it had been cleared away and replaced with old furniture and some Shinto paraphanelia, along with a bookcase full of scrolls and dusty books on vampiric and religious lore, as well as copy of Twilight buried under other books in the vain hope nobody would spot it.

What dominated the room, however, was the large coffin in the middle of it.

Seras hadn't been at the mortuary when the Senshi and DAPC had attacked it, but those who had could say that it perfectly resembled the one that Rei had first emerged from as the Archon of Flames. It had a beautiful black lacquer finish, and its design had obscure runes, pentagrams, and a few unnaturally creepy drawings all lovingly and expertly crafted so that they folded and curved around the coffin and detracted nothing from the overall decoration. On the face of the lid, where a cross would normally be placed, the sigil of Mars instead shone brilliantly with supernatural light, positively glowing in the dim lighting of the sub-levels. The entire coffin was also wrapped in thick, rusty iron chains, with a massive and archaic padlock on one side.

Of course, if anyone had asked Rei herself, she would have happily told them that the coffin in fact WAS the same one from the mortuary that Ranma had blown apart with a stray shot and then wrecked with a tornado. Frankly though, that night had been harrowing and turbulent enough that nobody gave such an unimportant detail any notice.

Seras walked up to the coffin and guzzled the last of his liquor before wiping his chin and setting the empty bottle down on the floor. Producing a wrought iron key from his pocket, he worked it into the padlock and then twisted, causing the lock to spring open and the chains to collapse loosely, many of them spilling onto the floor.

Then he raised a fist and rapped his knuckles against the heavy wooden lid.

_Klok! Klok! Klok!_ "Wakey wakey! It's a beautiful evening and I've got a fresh bag of disgusting bodily fluids for you!"

There were a few moments of silence as Seras backed away, and then the lid of the coffin shifted to the side, eventually sliding off completely.

Rei yawned and rubbed her eyes as she sat up, consciousness finally returning to her as her enhanced vampiric senses started flooding her waking mind with information like a river overrunning a dam.

After a few seconds her mind was up to speed with her surroundings, and then she gave the man next to her a bored look. "Oh. It's you."

"Yes, today was my day to wake up and feed the monsters. Here you are," the failure of a doctor took out a plastic bag full of blood and tossed it haphazardly into the coffin.

"Do I get some?" A forlorn voice came from one of the vaults, and Seras rolled his eyes before taking out another blood bag, this one only a fifth full.

"Yes, yes, shut up. Just a minute."

Rei grunted as she picked up the blood bag, shooting a glare at Seras' back as he opened the vault door. The annoying drunk was easily her second least favorite person in the DAPC, and every time he was in charge of unlocking her coffin and feeding her, she was reminded why. He was rude, insensitive, prejudiced, inexplicably arrogant, and didn't make any attempt to hide any of it. To say nothing of his alcohol-laced odor; if her vampiric sense of smell wasn't coupled with the fact that she didn't technically need to breathe, the man's breath could have suffocated her.

That said, her least favorite person in the DAPC was, of course, Snake. When he was responsible for waking her, Rei had to seriously consider whether it was worth getting out of her coffin in the evening.

Thus far, nobody had managed to impress upon the American that her ability to regenerate in seconds was NOT an invitation to blow her up just for kicks.

Rei unconsciously sharpened a nail to a knife's edge, and then cut a slit into a corner of the blood bag before she stuck that corner into her mouth and started to suck on it. As usual, Seras hadn't brought her a straw as she always requested, the little prick.

"Whose blood is this? The pigtailed man's?" Garo asked hopefully as Seras tossed him the bag.

"Of course it's not. I've told you before; we're not wasting any more of the good stuff on YOU until you're useful to us," Seras said, snorting disdainfully.

"And how, pray tell, am I to be useful to you when all you do is leave me trapped in this blasted prison?" Garo snarled back.

It had been more than a week since he had heard news of the defeat of Ran and the annihilation of the majority of his species, and days of meditation on the subject, as well as the occasional glimpse of a comely vampire on the other side of his prison door, had led him to seriously consider a re-evaluation of his loyalties and priorities.

Unfortunately, he had found rather quickly that the humans had totally lost interest in him as anything more than a prisoner to be kept alive, and definitely didn't trust him one iota. And although he attributed this mostly to the humans' insensible prejudice and ignorant fear, there was one small part of his mind that insisted this was at least partially his fault for being a murdering asshole.

Seeing his captor ignore his question and close the vault door, Garo sighed and picked up his meal, recognizing that he had been given yet another lonely evening to reflect upon the quandary.

"So, explain to me again why you guys keep my coffin chained up during the daytime? It's not like I'm going to go out for a stroll in the daylight," Rei groused as the vault slowly closed and locked itself.

Seras rolled his eyes. "We don't know that, so we're not going to take any chances. Tsukino-san and Saotome-san trust you completely. Nobody else does. And since we couldn't really stop you from wandering around at night if we tried, we'll settle for restricting your actions during the day. For now, at least."

"Okay, I can respect that," Rei said irritably. "Frankly, if **you** were turned I wouldn't hesitate to stake you, so it's fine. But are the **chains** really necessary?"

"Not at all," Seras admitted, looking rather put off by Rei's rationalization, "but it's appropriately dramatic and gothic-themed, so we use them anyway."

Rei blinked, and then turned toward her desk. "Is THAT why Yamazaki-san got me human skulls with candles on them when I asked him for a desk lamp?"

"Yes. Do you have any more stupid questions for me, or can I go now? Not all of us are nocturnal, you know."

Rei growled slightly, repressing a sudden, carnal urge to tear the man's heart out and eat it like an apple. 'Would probably taste better than this stale, refrigerated junk, too,' she considered, feeling wildly conflicted emotions at the thought.

Seeing the vampiric Senshi hesitate, Seras turned away and began walking out. "By the way, Tsukino will probably meet you later and say this herself, but she was hoping you could try one of your silly magic divination things later."

Rei frowned, and stopped drinking. "I'll need a sacred fire for that, though..."

Seras stopped and fought down a chuckle. "A sacred fire? You? Wouldn't a cursed fire be more appropriate?"

Rei was about to snap at him angrily, but actually stopped to consider this before she frowned and crossed her arms under her breasts. "You know... I have no idea. You might be right. But in either case, I'll need supplies."

The medical officer shrugged and waved her off. "Talk to Saotome or the captain if you need something. I don't have time for your nonsense."

Rei's eyes flared a deep red as she glared at the man's back, trying her best to light him aflame with just her gaze.

_Fwoom!_ "Ow! Ow! Hey! Stop that!" Seras shouted, diving onto the floor and rolling about to put out the cinder on his shirt collar.

'Oops. I forgot I actually CAN light people on fire by glaring at them.' Rei winced, immediately feeling guilty and putting out the flame.

Seras glared at the vampiress as he stood up, but said nothing as he stalked out of the room and toward the elevator; inwardly he was rather amazed that he could say that much to the midian and get away with nothing but a little burn, but he wasn't about to let the undead girl know that.

Seeing the mortal step into the elevator, Rei finished off her blood bag and then debated what to do that night. There was a fifty-fifty chance that Usagi would be around and awake, although spending the night with the cyborg girl was never productive. Rei wasn't sure whether Usagi was just trying to protect her feelings or if the blonde's friendship was really so pure and unconditional, but Usagi's mannerisms toward her hadn't changed at all. The ditzy cyborg still wanted to go see movies and read manga and talk about boy bands, and she spoke of Rei's vampirism as if it was simply a unique character trait rather than a curse or an abomination against nature. In truth, Rei had trouble deciding whether that attitude annoyed or soothed her; it seemed that no matter what happened to them, Usagi was still good at twisting her emotions into knots.

Putting aside the option of playing with her friend, Rei decided that she'd try to work up a divination ritual to replace her older one. The only other options were reading all night, which didn't seem very productive, especially when her genre kept drifting from ancient gothic lore to vampiric teenage romance, or taking a trip around the city at night, which wasn't productive at all, and made her feel vaguely uncomfortable.

"Rei-hime..."

Rei's eyes narrowed as she heard the muffled voice from within the vault. "What do **you** want, scumbag?" she snapped, in no mood to converse with the other vampire after having to put up with Seras.

Talking to Garo always irritated her to no end because everything about the conversations reminded her that she was no longer human. She hated Garo as much as anyone else, and the male vampire always seemed confused as to why, as if he expected some sort of **kinship** with her. The idea made her sick, and she took every opportunity to inform him of that.

"If the human has departed, I should like to-"

"That human has a** name**, you know," Rei snapped, floating up out of her coffin and promptly noticing the empty bottle sitting next to it. "A name I'll be bringing up the next time I see Asuka-san. I mean, I'll put up with a lot from that guy, but **littering**? I've warned him about leaving his junk around here!"

Garo's voice was absent for a long moment. "Forgive me for not memorizing the names of our captors, Rei-hime," he began, only to be cut off again.

"No. Now shut up," Rei said simply, turning toward her book shelf.

Her "conversations" with Garo were usually like this; he'd start off cautiously, lavishing her with respect and deference... and then within a few sentences he'd casually say something that she didn't like, usually in a subtle attempt to portray himself as her ally.

On the plus side, he always fell silent after she told him to, which she very much appreciated.

"Hmmm... I think this will do." Taking out a musty old tome, she blasted the dust off with a brief telekinetic burst and then opened it up, flipping to the relevant page.

After looking it over, Rei nodded and then laid it on the table, idly lighting one of the candles with a thought. Although she could see just fine in total darkness, she found the light comforting; darkvision portrayed everything in a grainy black and white, like an old video, and she found it rather unpleasant.

"Hmm?" Rei suddenly turned her head sharply. "What was that?"

Silence greeted her question. As far as she could tell, the only movement in the room were the particles of dust falling onto the floor.

"That's strange. I thought I saw something..." she mumbled to herself. Sniffing the air, Rei could detect... well, she detected SOMETHING unfamiliar in the air. Hell if she knew what, though.

An ever-so-slight slithering noise alerted her senses, and she turned around just in time to see a shadow move into the hall behind her that led deeper into the sub-level.

'Wait, that couldn't have been a shadow, there's no light over there,' Rei remembered, becoming even more annoyed with her unwanted powers. 'But then what was it?'

She was tempted to turn around and alert whatever officers were in headquarters that they had something besides nosferatu running loose in their underground prison, but her curiosity and determination won out over caution, and she darted through the air after the disturbance.

Rei had never explored the DAPC's underground facilities before. She had never been given a complete tour of the building despite being set up to live there, and although she'd never been banned from looking around the place, she had been far more interested and occupied with the new and involuntarily changes to her body than she was interested in the menagerie of weirdness that the DA kept locked up and forgotten.

Now that she was actively following the bizarre scent through the darkened hallways, she was finding it hard to focus on her quarry and not get sidetracked.

"There! Stop!" Rei shouted as she saw... whatever it was she was chasing slip behind a corner.

Darting through the air, she rounded the corner herself, and then her eyes narrowed.

The hallway led to a single door, obviously heavily reinforced. She could see no sign of whatever she had been chasing, though.

The door was covered in warning signs, which gave Rei pause. They covered everything from "Danger!" and "Don't EVER open! Seriously!" to a far more cryptic "Cut off their limbs".

Touching the door gently, Rei confirmed that it was primarily steel, and didn't contain any lead, silver, or anything else that could prevent her from phasing through it.

'A little peek couldn't hurt as long as I don't open the door,' she decided, slowly sticking her face into the wall of steel as a ring of arcane symbols appeared around the point of contact.

It took a few seconds for her face to emerge on the other side of the barrier, and Rei grimaced as she made sure to get her head all the way through before she opened her eyes; she had learned fairly quickly that trying to use her normal sensory organs while parts of her brain were discorporated into magical essence was confusing at best, though Ranma suggested she just needed more practice.

Once she had opened her eyes to the interior of the room, Rei promptly closed them again, and then tried opening them once more in the hope that the first image was some sort of fluke.

Unfortunately, it was not. In retrospect she would consider it ironic and unseemly that a vampire should be so shocked at the sight of blood, even if it was streaked across the wall in horrific messages and cryptic patterns, but at that particular moment all she could do was gape at the gore that decorated the room.

"Hrrrraugh..."

Rei reflexively glanced down at the noise, and she winced at the sight of several corpses lying on the floor.

One of which was raising its head and snarling at her.

The midian's eyes bulged. The creature resembled some sort of mutated ghoul, with its hands twisted into long, bony scythes, and its lower torso missing. Instead of legs, its spine had lengthened and thickened, and the foul appendage slowly rose into the air to reveal a slimy, twisted spike at the end, similar to a scorpion's tail.

"SHYAE!"

Rei quickly pulled her head out of the door as the monster leapt for her, wincing as she heard the sound of bone scraping against steel on the other side.

"Okay... that... was not what I was chasing," the vampiress mumbled shakily, moving away from the doorway. She had seen enough ghouls such that the disgusting creatures didn't alarm her anymore, but that... thing had attacked with a vicious intelligence and carnal hatred that she'd never sensed from a ghoul.

Suddenly, she caught sight of something moving out of the corner of her eye, and Rei whirled about in the air. "You're not getting away!"

Zooming after her quarry once again, she saw a dark blur vanish under another door, and levitated to the floor in front of it.

Looking at the door suspiciously, she was relieved to find that this one only had a warning that the interior was kept cold at all times, represented by a little generic stick-figure man wearing a parka. Below that the room was labeled "Small Organism Cryogenic Storage".

Quickly phasing through the door entirely, Rei immediately stretched out her senses. A moment later she retracted them, wincing slightly. Not only had she been unable to sense her target, but many of the things that were being frozen here had powerful psychic emanations even while they were frozen, and some of the energies were almost painful to absorb.

Glancing around the lab as she searched, Rei eventually got bored of looking over the floor constantly and finally took notice of the creatures entombed in the lab. Many of the cryogenic containers were labeled, and some of them flickered or sparked dangerously, as if they were on the verge of breaking.

"Hmm... 'Dire Rat'... 'Goa'uld'... 'Mini-Cthulu'... 'Talking Ermine/Panty Thief'... 'Chucky the Killer Doll'..." Giving a grunt of disgust at the excessively scarred face of the homicidal toy, as well as a slight shudder at the waves of psionic hatred emanating from its frozen prison, Rei tore her eyes away and turned to another pair of containers behind her.

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw two Silver Millennium-pattern cryo-stasis tanks mounted on the wall, each with a moon cat inside. Below the tanks was a name plate that read: "Mau (Warning: Subjects are intelligent and capable of EXCESSIVE verbal communication)"

Rei walked up to the tanks, almost disbelieving as she stared at them. "I don't believe it... more moon cats? Here? How long have these little guys been frozen? Where did they come from?"

Predictably, there was no one present to answer her questions, and frankly, no one that currently worked for the DAPC knew or cared about the various critters that they kept refrigerated down in the vaults.

Glancing around, and completely forgetting her original purpose for entering this room, Rei moved to scrape the frost off one of the stasis units, revealing some controls and a name plate.

"Hmmm... Nova? Okay, now how do you work this thing?" Hoping that the stasis tanks didn't have any function to self-destruct or cut off life support to the subject, Rei pushed a large red button on the side of the device.

_Pshooooo! Crk!_ Gases gushed from the vents on top of the tank before the stasis unit started to heat up, causing the ice covering the device to crack and fall off bit by bit.

Before long, the body underneath the glass started to twitch, and then the glass tube suddenly popped open, allowing the rust-colored moon cat inside to roll forward and tumble out onto the counter in a heap.

"Ow! Wh... What..."

Rei simply stood over the groggy alien, her expression curious. 'Huh. Sounds like a girl,' she noted.

Nova shook her head rapidly to try and clear away the cobwebs. "Huh? Where am I?"

"You're in a police building in Tokyo," Rei explained, tilting her head to one side. "How are you feeling?"

The moon cat looked startled. "A **police** building? What'd I do? You can't just lock me up like this, you got nothin' on me!"

Rei sweatdropped as the cat bristled, looking at her suspiciously. "Uh... calm down, please. You're not under arrest or anything. This is just where I found you. Are you here to help the Sailor Senshi?"

"The Senshi?" Nova scoffed. "Screw the Senshi!"

The sweatdrop was replaced by a vein popping up. "Excuse me?"

"Military thugs is what they are!" Nova growled, her tail swaying irritably as she idly pawed at her damp fur to smooth it. "They're just tools of the monarchy to keep the people down! But let me tell you girlfriend, the people CAN'T be silenced! Fight the power!"

Rei's eyebrow twitched. "I... think I see what's happening here. So... are you a rebel, or-"

"I'm not a rebel, I'm a liberator!" The reddish feline declared. "Rebels fight against a legitimate authority! I didn't vote for Serenity, did you?"

"Uh... well, I wasn't-"

"Exactly! You didn't vote for her because she's part of the imperialist matriarchal society that puts their little dictators into power without the people's permission! It's the duty of each and every citizen to resist the authoritarian regime and stick it the Woman! Vov ho revoluten!"

Rei's brow creased as she fought to keep from sighing. "Okay, fine. Ho revoluten. What's the last thing you remember?"

Nova stopped talking briefly, and spent a few seconds grooming her fur as she concentrated. "Well... I think I was thawed out a few times since I was originally frozen, but my memories of those incidents are pretty hazy. Like college. Did you know that Neptune Central Academy has the BEST void shrooms this side of-"

"Do you remember how or why you were frozen?" The vampiress interrupted, trying to keep the new moon cat on a potentially useful topic. "I can figure that you're definitely not a royal attendant."

Nova snorted. "Of course that's what you'd think, huh? Only the rich, lazy, privileged snobs from the stupid moon castle get sent forward in stasis. The hard-working people that actually keep the empire-"

"Please, just... don't," Rei mumbled, massaging her forehead. "Seriously. When were you frozen?"

"Oh, right. Well, that's a funny story, actually," Nova admitted, her whiskers twitching. "I was at a Youma Lords' Death Knell concert, and the main thumper went into an awesome eight-minute solo jam. I'm guessing I scored some bad 'nip, because things started to go a little prismatic, and-"

"Some bad 'nip'?" Rei asked incredulously.

"It's medicinal!" The rust-colored mau hissed, her tail standing straight up. "I have stress issues! Don't judge me! ANYWAY, next thing I knew, I was being restrained by a bunch of angry Lunar Marines on a frigate outgoing from Mercury. I'm not sure what was going on, but apparently there was some kind of major uprising going on." Nova calmed considerably, and then looked slightly embarrassed. "Considering where I was, it definitely wasn't a good idea to respond with 'Cool! Are they winning?' There was a lot of angry shouting, and I think somebody tazed me. And here I am."

There was a moment of silence as the vampiric Senshi stared down at the moon cat, who stared back up at her.

"So!" Nova said excitedly, "who won?"

Instead of answering, Rei swiftly grabbed the moon cat and shoved her back into the capsule, shutting the door before Nova could protest.

Slamming her hand on a blue button, the nosferatu sighed in relief as the device gave out a hiss before it began the freezing process once again, muffling and finally silencing the moon cat's angry yowling.

"I really don't know what I was thinking," Rei mumbled as she ran a hand through her hair. "As if we really need another moon cat around." Although slightly curious as to what the other one, Orion judging by the nameplate, would be like, the vampiress turned away and made to leave the storage area.

"Guh?" Rei gasped as she felt something touch her leg, and then stiffened as a paralyzing tingle tore through her body. "Wh-What?!"

Her eyes boggled as a psychic pulse bombarded her, and she felt a surge of emotion brush against her mind. Desperation... fear... hunger... need... curiosity... loneliness... sorrow...

And then, in an instant, the presence was gone, the cacophony of feelings fading away rapidly as her paralysis vanished.

Rei promptly shot up into the air, tucking her legs under her as she rapidly searched the floor for any sign of what had touched her.

The vampiress growled when she found nothing, baring her fangs in frustration. This evening had gotten off to a bad start, and her little adventure in the forgotten prisons of the DAPC wasn't improving matters.

Suddenly, Rei felt a tingle in the back of her mind, and after a moment she realized that someone was approaching her coffin.

Glancing around one last time to ensure she couldn't find anything out of place, Rei summoned her energies to her and materialized a pair of magic circles that spun around her body rapidly. After a moment, the vampiress vanished in a burst of flame, the eldritch symbols fading away after her.

* * *

Ranma blinked as a pair of magic circles appeared over the giant coffin, and idly stroked the handle of the Jackal as his possessed handgun snarled in irritation.

_Fwoosh!_ Rei appeared in a puff of fire, and the vampiress glanced down at Ranma approvingly. "Ranma-kun, hello. I'm surprised to see you."

Ranma nodded pleasantly. "I took a nap during the afternoon, so I figured I could spend the evening with you. I imagine it gets pretty lonely down here with nothing but that idiot to talk to." He shoved a thumb toward Garo's prison.

Rei nodded hesitantly, not because she in any way doubted that the other midian was an idiot, but rather because she was trying to work out how serious her earlier chase was. She was very pleased that the pigtailed cop had decided to spend time with her for no apparent reason, and she actually debated putting the matter aside so as not to ruin the mood. "Listen, Ranma-kun... there's something down here."

The pigtailed man looked at her strangely. "What do you mean by that?"

"Earlier, after I woke up. I saw something moving through the halls, and I chased it around for a while," Rei admitted, standing in the air as she rubbed her chin. "I didn't get a good look at it, but from what I could tell it was almost like a shadow... except that I don't SEE shadows, so I suppose you could think of it as a... pool of darkness, maybe?"

Ranma frowned, his eyes narrowing. He was uncomfortably familiar with a technique similar to what Rei was describing. "So what happened?"

"Well, I chased it into a room, and then I got distracted - you don't want to know the details, trust me - and then I think it touched my leg." The vampiress frowned. "I felt a psychic pulse, and then it escaped. I couldn't find any way to track it."

Ranma thought this over for a moment, and then turned toward the vault that held the other vampire currently in the DAPC's custody. "Hey, freak! You hearing this?"

There was a moment of silence before Garo's voice answered. "This freak has a **name**, officer," came the sardonic reply, mimicking Rei's earlier rebuke.

Rei crossed her arms over her chest. "Respect IS a two-way street, it's true." And then her eyes narrowed. "Unfortunately, your side of the street is barricaded by a **giant metal wall**. Don't be a smartass."

Giving the vampiress an appreciative smirk, Ranma raised his voice again. "I remember that one of the bloodsuckers that broke into the HQ could turn into a puddle of shadow... or something like that. I don't remember seeing it from any of the other freaks, though. What kind of trick was it?"

No reply came immediately, and after a moment Rei growled. "Answer the question, Garo!"

"Shadow manipulation magic is a very difficult and... unusual ability. It takes considerable study and practice, and does not develop naturally. I imagine even Rei-hime could not manage it without the proper materials and a competent instructor." The voice was reluctant and resigned.

Ranma nodded to himself. He didn't know why the other vampire called Rei "hime" or why he would spill his guts to the vampiric Senshi and not his actual captors, but he wasn't going to complain so long as they could extract answers without also having to extract his blood. "Go on."

"I do not know much more about the ability, but the only vampires I know of that were at all accomplished in such techniques were Ran-sama and Yamato-senpai. Both of whom are dead, or so you tell me."

"They're the only ones?" Ranma asked skeptically.

"They're the only ones I know of," Garo corrected. "I do not presume to know every vampire in Japan, much less their abilities. I can offer only what I know."

Rei snorted. "Useless twit."

Ranma frowned. "So, putting aside whether or not there are mystery vampires running around, do you have any idea what it was that Rei-chan saw?"

Another pause. "I do not. I am not very old, in terms of vampires, and was raised in modern times. I'm hardly very well-versed in strange creatures or abilities."

Rei snorted again. "Told you."

"Just thought I'd ask," Ranma admitted shrugging. "Thanks, fangs. I'll think about pricking my finger and sticking it into your meal next time I bring you food."

Ignoring the appreciative sounds from the other side of the vault door, Ranma gestured for Rei to follow him toward the elevator.

Rei frowned as they took the elevator up to the main floor. She had several questions and concerns at the moment, but one tugged at her curiosity hard enough for her to put aside the sudden and unexplained attack in the DAPC headquarters.

"You know, I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but... what's the deal with your blood?" Rei blurted.

Ranma looked surprised by the question, and then frowned as he scratched his head. Come to think of it, he didn't really know why vampires loved his blood so much. He knew he was much healthier and stronger than everybody else, and that Seras could convert his blood into medicine, but how did that make it addictively delicious?

Quickly deciding that honesty was pointless if it didn't provide an answer, he fell back on his stand-by conversation strategy: boasting.

"It's due to the elevated Awesome levels in my DNA," Ranma said seriously, as if admitting a precious secret.

"The elevated** what**." Rei deadpanned, her eyes going flat.

"It's true," Ranma said solemnly, crossing his arms over his chest. "My blood has one hundred times the Awesome of a normal person. When you get right down to it, I'm SO Awesome that I barely qualify as a human. You could actually consider me some kind of mutant, like Kyle, except instead of being super strong - actually, scratch that, I'm super strong too - I'm super Awesome."

"Uh huh," Rei said, clearly annoyed by the absurd explanation. "And all the Awesome makes your blood irresistible to parasites?"

"I haven't heard a better explanation," Ranma said smugly, smirking.

Rei's lips twitched into a smile. "Well then, why don't I take a taste and find out for myself?"

Ranma was immediately on guard, his eyes narrowing. "Hey, stop kidding around."

"What?" Rei asked innocently, her expression shifting into a lazy smirk as she stepped toward the pigtailed man. "I'm not going to drain you or anything. Just a little sip."

Ranma took a step back even as he tried to look apathetic. "Knock it off, Rei-chan. You're not fooling me." He hoped the sweat trickling down his forehead didn't give him away. To his knowledge, Rei had never fed from an actual human before, but he didn't actually know her well enough to pin down her behavior as just teasing.

"What are you saying?" Rei ask sadly, drawing even closer. "You mean that you'd give your Awesome blood to that idiot in the vault but not me?"

"Hey, it's not like I'm just handing it out to everyone who asks," Ranma said defensively, trying desperately not to let nervousness enter his voice as he tried to step back again, only to find himself stuck in the corner of the elevator. "I only give some to the freak when he's actually helpful!"

Finally, Rei simply fell against the pigtailed man, giving him a sultry gaze as she draped her arms around her neck. "So if I... give you something... you'll let me have a taste?"

Then, without letting her victim respond, Rei stuck her face under his chin and licked him, running the full length of her tongue (a bit longer than it used to be when she was human) over his throat.

If asked about such behavior, Rei really couldn't explain what had possessed her to do such a thing; even if she enjoyed teasing people as much as anyone else, such flirty sexual posturing was far more Makoto's style, not hers. At the moment though, regardless of how much sense it made, the vampiric Senshi was thoroughly enjoying Ranma's stunned reaction.

She was enjoying it so much, in fact, that she didn't even notice when the elevator door finally opened.

"Ewww. Necrophilia doesn't suit you, Saotome," Snake said, sticking his tongue out in disgust.

Rei certainly took offense to that. She knew that she was a very attractive woman and that being a vampire, whatever else she could say about it, had only ramped up her looks to drop-dead sexy. Being able to selectively and permanently alter small portions of her body had seen to that, and it didn't hurt that she was perpetually wearing what amounted to a slutty prom outfit. Certainly any man should have overjoyed to even briefly entertain the IDEA of being with her, vampire or not.

But then, it was hard to express all that when you were trying your level best not to literally burn up from embarrassment.

Asuka and Ami stood to the side of the DA's weapons expert, each of them gaping and the younger of them flushing considerably. Neither said a word, caught completely flat-footed.

After a few seconds passed with everyone else frozen in stunned silence, Snake decided to speak again.

"If you need more time, feel free to head back down," he drawled. "We'll wait."

Rei actually considered the idea just to escape the looks she was getting as she quickly pushed herself off of Ranma, and only refused to do so because she knew the action would be misinterpreted. "Th-This is... it isn't... I wasn't trying to..."

Finally, Asuka seemed to snap out of her daze, turning sharply toward Ranma. "Saotome-kun, I know it's difficult for you, but try to refrain from seducing every female organism that we take in."

The pigtailed man cringed. "I d-don't do it on **purpose**!"

"Hey! I am NOT an 'organism'!" Rei growled. She would have tried denying that she'd been "seduced" too, but honestly, she didn't have a better explanation handy, so she'd let the assumption stand.

Without waiting for the others to crack more jokes about it, the nosferatu grabbed Snake's arm and practically threw him into the elevator as she stepped out of it.

"As long as you're here, make yourself useful. There's something creepy skulking around in the sub-levels."

Snake didn't seem to care one way the other about being yanked around by the midian, and turned lazily after he was in the elevator. "Something creepier than a pair of blood-sucking corpses?"

Rei promptly phased her arm through the section of the elevator above the control panel and hit the button to send the elevator on its way. "Just get out of here!"

"Yesss, Missstresss," Snake hissed mockingly, bowing deeply as the elevator doors closed, separating him and a still-subdued Ranma from the women.

Rei clenched her jaw tightly as she yanked her arm out of the wall, feeling her teeth lengthen and sharpen unconsciously as she struggled with her anger. "WHY do you put up with that man?"

Asuka shrugged. "Because as much as I'd like to be part of a department tasked with making polite small talk and being nice to everybody, our job has more to do with killing things. And that, simply enough, is where Snake excels."

Then the captain shook her head. "But never mind that. We have more important things to discuss than the men. Come with me."

She turned sharply on her heel, and Rei followed after a moment of hesitation. Ami, who had been utterly speechless since she'd appeared, almost stumbled to keep up after she realized that she was being left behind.

"Ah, R-Rei-chan, good evening," the genius Senshi said lamely, and considerably late.

Rei forced herself to smile back. "Good evening, Ami-chan. How was your day?" It wasn't that she wasn't happy to see Ami, but her current stress levels just didn't allow for genuine pleasantries.

"Not as productive as I'd hoped," the blue-haired girl mumbled, feeling her some of her tension and embarrassment drain away. "I can't get a bead on Hotaru at all, and all I've been able to figure out is that wherever she is, she's probably alive, probably in Senshi form, and she teleported there."

"Well, that's something," Rei said. "I've actually been doing some thinking on the problem myself, and I may be able to help in searching at least a little."

"Really?" Ami perked up curiously, and Asuka promptly glanced back at them.

"I've been doing a little experimenting with familiars," Rei explained, gesturing to a window. It promptly slid open noisily. "Most vampires use bats, for reasons I'm not completely clear on. Some get other familiars eventually, but bats are the standard."

The vampiress shrugged and raised a hand as a small black shape dove in through the window, causing Asuka's hand to twitch toward the pistol in its holster.

"I prefer crows," the vampire princess said simply as the black bird alighted on her wrist, an unnatural red glimmer in its eyes. "I doubt it will be much help, but I can have a few murders comb the area where Hotaru vanished."

Asuka nodded slowly, the gears in her head turning as she rapidly worked through the innumerable strategic applications of having a horde of inconspicuous flying spies and decoys available.

Although it was easy to appreciate how similar the women were, Ami's mental gears whirled in a different direction, as always more practical than tactical. "Aren't crows diurnal?"

Rei sweatdropped. "Uh... yes. Very much so. And they never get tired of whining to me about it, either."

"That's probably why the others use bats," Asuka explained helpfully.

Rei twitched. "Ah. Okay, that makes sense."

"Caw," said the crow gently, ruffling its feathers.

Neither of the other girls knew what the crow had said, or in fact if the crow had actually communicated in any meaningful way, but they were mildly alarmed when Rei suddenly smacked the bird with her free hand, looking quite upset and baring her lengthened fangs.

"Shut up before I feed you to the alien," the vampiress snapped, her eyes glowing briefly.

When it came to her familiars, it wasn't that she was a particularly vindictive or cruel master, and she had no particular desire for birds to submit to absolute, unwavering servitude as her unquestioning slaves.

But she was quickly learning that most crows had VERY filthy mouths. Or rather, beaks. Was that right? Thoughts, then.

Whatever. The point was that even a sailor (the sailing ones, not the magical ones) wouldn't have put up with them for long if he could have understood what they were saying.

"That's all well and good, but if we can move past your sexual harassment of my men and the physical harassment of the local wildlife, I have a very serious proposition for you, Hino-san." Asuka said, reaching the door to the briefing room and holding the entrance open.

Rei's face was a brilliant red as she hastily stepped past the shorter girl and into the room.

"I'm going to be blunt, Hino-san," Asuka said as Ami took her chair next to her friend, "I want you working for the DAPC."

Rei blinked.

"And I mean as a full employee, not a battle-beast like Hunter. Meaning a full salary, benefits, shift duties, taking orders, the whole thing," the police captain continued onward.

The vampiress cocked her head to one side in contemplation. Although it wasn't quite right to say that she had been expecting this, the sudden request didn't exactly take her by surprise, either. "Why do you want me working here?"

"Do you want the real reasons or the diplomatic-sounding reasons?" Asuka asked promptly.

Rei couldn't help but smile at the woman's honesty; out of all the DAPC officers, Asuka was easily her favorite. It was just impossible for her not to respect the woman. "Well, you can start with the diplomatic reasons. Let you butter me up first," she drawled, leaning back in her chair.

"Sure. Strategically, there's no reason NOT to want you working for us," Asuka reasoned as she started ticking off points on her fingers. "You're powerful, you're highly mobile, you're practically unkillable, you're active when most of my officers want to be asleep, and apparently you have a small army of personal spies and drones at your command. You have your tactical weaknesses too, and the rate at which we're going through transfusion blood makes me uneasy, but that's nothing. Whether we like it or not Hino-san, you are Ran's legacy, his superweapon, and currently you spend every night reading or kicking back with Tsukino-san. I want to put you to use."

Rei nodded, liking the no-nonsense tone. She didn't really like the idea of being thought of as a weapon, but it was much preferable to being treated as a monster. "Now give me the real reason."

"I need to control you," Asuka said, her gaze and tone hardening. "Or, at the very least, I need to make sure you're controlled. Right now Tsukino-san can do it, but we all know she thinks with her heart and not her head." Rei clearly didn't like this line of reasoning, but the police captain kept going. "The reason is simple: Like Tsukino-san, you've spontaneously become very powerful, to the point that it will be very difficult to stop you if you decide to go on a rampage. More to the point, you're also in a similar position in that we don't know how much control you exercise over your own actions; both of you have been in enemy hands and emerged completely different, and it would be irresponsible and stupid of me to assume your free will and good conscience has been completely untouched."

Asuka took a deep breath, and then pointed at Rei, who was frowning at her. "In addition, you find yourself in the... awkward position of being part of a species that eats humans. The vampires that we've seen turned in the past have shown little to no aversion to murder and what is, in a way, cannibalism. I can only guess that there's some mechanism in the transformation that causes this, something that can turn an ordinary, harmless human into a bloodthirsty killing machine after a few days and a tiny burst of eldritch power. You, thankfully, don't seem to have been affected, or at least resist the effect admirably."

Rei was proud of the fact that she didn't wince at that. She HAD been affected, but luckily it was a lot easier to ignore the craving for human blood when the humans surrounding you were some of your dearest friends. Still, it proved to be a problem when people like Seras were around, and she didn't want ANYONE to know that.

"I have no reason to believe you'll suddenly break down into a murderous beast, but at the same time, I don't have adequate assurance that you won't fly around eating random people if we just leave you alone every night with nothing to do. It is my hope that the discipline and time required for normal police duty will keep you out of any trouble and convince me once and for all that you don't pose a threat to innocent people."

Rei kept her face carefully neutral as a wide range of emotions surged through her at the suggestion. Fear, anger, sorrow, and disgust all featured prominently, but there was also a considerable measure of pride and hope. Pride that she, who had fallen so far, who had become less than human and was chained up in the basement daily, was being treated as an equal despite her undeath. And hope that maybe, if she was careful, it would stay that way.

"Okay, I understand your point," Rei drawled, "but that doesn't mean I like it." Her eyes narrowed. "Also, I don't relish the idea of becoming a special weapon for a government agency. Especially not the DAPC. You guys are nuts, and you actually ARRESTED us. The Sailor Senshi!"

"I make no apologies for that. You spent but a few hours in jail and then everything was sorted out," Asuka said evenly. "I was doing my job and you were doing yours. At the time, there was a conflict with that. There is none now, so I'm calling it water under the bridge."

"And about you being nuts?" Rei deadpanned.

"I WILL apologize for that," the older woman said, sighing, "but it's not as if it helps. And nuts or not, our assistance was pivotal in your recovery."

"You have a point," Rei began slowly, "But I need some more convincing. What are you going to do for me if I join up?"

Asuka's eyes narrowed. If that's how it was going to be... fine. She had a solid budget surplus anyway. "How about I give you a special bonus so that you can furnish a decent bedroom in the sub-levels?"

Rei raised an eyebrow. That actually didn't sound half bad. "As long as it doesn't have to be tomb-themed."

Asuka frowned. "Okay, how about I give you an annual budget for it, but it DOES have to be tomb-themed."

The vampiress waited for the blue-haired woman to admit she was joking, but nothing came. Eventually, she shrugged; sometimes compromise was simply unavoidable. "Fine. Next, I want Snake executed."

Both women felt a pleasurable tremor run through their bodies at the very thought of seeing the American reduced to a blood stain on the wall. Ami, predictably, looked horrified.

Soon enough, however, Asuka had to let reality intrude on her imagination. "Impossible. Tempting, but ultimately impossible. I'll make sure he's never in charge of waking you up anymore, though."

Rei nodded. She didn't really think that last one would have worked out anyway. "Worth a shot. Actually, can you just have Ranma-kun and Usagi-chan do it? I really don't like putting up with Tuko-san or Yamazaki-san, and the last time Tekai-san did it he broke the key and decided to just rip my coffin in half."

Asuka raised an eyebrow. No complaints about her wake-up calls or Junko's, and yet only Ranma and Usagi made Rei's "approved" list. Interesting. "Anything else, your highness?"

"Yes, actually. When I'm hired, I want to start as a sergeant," Rei said seriously.

Ami and Asuka blinked, not having expected that at all. "What? Why?" The latter asked.

Rei smirked, leaning forward and resting her chin on her hands. "Well, that would make me Usagi-chan's superior, wouldn't it?"

The two blue-haired women shared a glance.

Ami wanted to groan at Rei's pettiness. The Fire Senshi loved Usagi as much as everyone - considerably MORE than most, some suggested - but didn't much like taking orders from her. Although Rei had no real aspirations for leadership herself, she would leap at the chance to boss her princess around just for fun.

Asuka wasn't aware of Rei's turbulent history with Usagi, but it didn't take someone as smart as she was to see that Rei wasn't asking for a promotion because wanted higher pay or enjoyed greater responsibility. This was a joke to her.

"That's... possible," the older bluette mumbled, "but problematic."

"Why? Because I'm a vampire?" Rei asked, false indignation decorating her voice.

"I think it has more to do with you never even attending a police academy or anything of the sort," Ami offered.

"Actually," Asuka said, chewing her lip, "the problem is that a rank of sergeant would make you Saotome-kun's superior as well..."

The younger women stared at her, uncomprehending.

"Now, I can look the other way if you're going to be sucking face - or neck, or whatever - with a cadet, but fraternizing with a subordinate is a much more complicated matter." Asuka looked grave about the matter as she scratched her chin.

Rei looked livid. "That was... No! I'm not! We're not! It was just-"

"I mean, it's enough that you're cornering him in enclosed spaces and jumping him. What would you do if you had actual **authority** over Saotome-kun?" Asuka wondered aloud.

"All right! All right! Never mind!" Rei shouted, her face an almost solid red. "You win! I'll join! Just... stop!" Dammit, it was quickly becoming obvious that she'd never hear the end of this. If she ever managed to figure out that memory-erasing trick she'd read about, then the elevator incident was getting top priority.

Asuka tried hard not to smirk as she pulled out a folder and handed her a pen. "Paperwork. Should take about half an hour. We'll take care of outfitting and a little bit of formal training later, but for now I just want it official that you're with the DAPC. I'll be back in a bit."

Rei frowned at the police captain as she left, and then frowned even deeper as she flipped through the stack of papers. The crow from earlier landed on the desk in front of her, idly pecking at the pen.

The vampiress snatched it away, glaring at the avian as she pulled out one form in particular.

"Hmmm... medical history, huh? This one might be tricky," Rei mumbled, frowning at all the questions and little boxes that had been printed under the not-unreasonable assumption that the applicant was alive and human. "Ami-chan, do you think you can help me out with this?"

The Genius Senshi nodded immediately, taking the sheet of paper and looking it over briefly. "Ah, Rei-chan..."

Rei turned her attention back toward Ami, noting that her cheeks were partially flushed, and she seemed uncertain. "Yes? What is it?"

"So... were you... **tasting** Saotome-san, or...?"

Rei's cry of frustration and subsequent string of profanity had the crow cawing in what Ami swore sounded almost like a laugh.

* * *

"Where is it, where is it..." Makoto mumbled to herself as she flipped rapidly through a stack of envelopes and documents.

Lying all around her were several large folders and shoeboxes that had been opened and searched already, and stacks of papers, photos, and small objects were scattered all around the closet space where she was searching.

Anyone who knew much about Makoto could tell by looking that everything she was rooting through seemed to be articles and artifacts from her childhood, all part of a life that had been cruelly cut short by the freak plane crash that killed her parents. Photos of her parents and their friends, old drawings she had done in the years of childish innocence, death certificates, newspaper clippings about a certain plane crash, her parents' will and other legal documents...

Like her past, her belongings were firmly separated into two groups; the things associated with her life going forward, and the things associated with the life she had left behind... or rather, the life that had left HER behind. The former she kept around like anybody else to be used or consulted when convenient. The latter she kept filed away in a pile of dusty boxes in her closet, wishing to forget them entirely but knowing that she could not.

As one would expect, she rarely went through the boxes without good reason; the mementos were important to her but at the same time painful to look at. In fact, it had taken her over a week to finally convince herself that the idle thoughts tugging at the edge of her memory really warranted this kind of investigation.

Even now, as she skimmed over another stack of old photographs, the ponytailed girl couldn't help but wince painfully and wonder why she should even bother with this.

"Hey, Kino-san? You still up?" Came the voice of her roommate.

"Yeah, I'm almost done though. You can turn in if you'd like!" She answered back.

Makoto always found it unusual how her roommate would be so formal with someone she lived with, but then, they had never really bonded at all. Makoto's friendship and camaraderie with the Senshi just made her relationships with others seem so... temporary and shallow, sometimes. In fact, it was one of Makoto's favorite theories on why she and Minako couldn't keep a steady boyfriend.

She sighed as she opened the next envelope, revealing a photo of her parents posing next to another couple. Makoto's father was looking goofy and cheerful in the photo, contrasting sharply with the somber dignity of the man standing next to him, wearing a large golden crucifix that advertised his faith.

Makoto quickly dismissed the photo, not recognizing the people in it.

At least, she didn't until she pulled it aside, revealing the next photograph in the stack. Her eyes bugged out of her head as she stared at the image in front of her, and she felt a dozen puzzle pieces fall into place.

"It... It's him... It was him all along..." she mumbled, shaking her head. She didn't know what to feel at the moment. Excitement? Shock? Trepidation?

She checked her watch, and shook her head as she realized it was too late to call her friends. Well, too late for most of them, anyway; late evening was like late morning to Rei now that she was a vampire. Nonetheless, she pocketed the photo and decided to wait before bringing her news to the others. She had a lot to think about, after all.

* * *

"Congratulations Hino-san," Asuka said smugly, flipping through the papers, "from this point on it's official. You are an honorable member of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment."

Kyle and Usagi clapped enthusiastically from where they were standing behind Rei and Ami.

"This is so cool! Now we can work together!" Usagi cheered, practically giddy.

"And you'll be doing so right away," Asuka mumbled as she got to the last few pages. "We need to... wait, what's this?"

Ami flushed slightly, having expected the reaction. "That's, uh, Rei-chan's medical information. A lot of it is either not applicable or speculatory. Not to mention irrelevant, if the information is mostly for insurance purposes; I'm pretty sure vampires can't get sick."

Asuka frowned at the paper, and then shrugged. "I'll just staple a copy of her death certificate to the page. That should work."

"Death certificate? You actually applied for one for me?" Rei mumbled, feeling mildly uncomfortable with the idea. "Huh. Do I get a funeral, too?"

"Only if you're willing to sit through it," the police captain deadpanned.

Rei looked fairly disgusted by the idea, so Asuka moved right along.

"Putting that aside, we have work. Hino-san, your first mission is going to be recon. You will be joined in this task by Tsukino and Saotome."

Rei turned her head about, her long, jet black hair whipping about behind her. "Then shouldn't Ranma be here too?"

Asuka nodded, frowning. "Yes, he should. I already called him up several-"

"Heeeeeeaaarh!" The police captain was interrupted as a throaty hiss came from the other end of the hallway, and everyone turned to look as the source of the noise scrambled around the corner and rushed toward them.

Everyone's eyes widened as the legless, zombie-like monstrosity that Rei recognized from her brief jaunt around the sub-levels slithered toward them across the floor, its scythe-like arms pulling its body along at remarkable speed as its sharpened, jagged teeth clenched in a fearsome scowl.

Time almost seemed to slow down as the beast charged.

Asuka's first reaction was to go for her pistol.

Ami's first reaction was to consider that she should really start hanging around the DAPC HQ in Senshi form. Her second reaction was to freeze like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Usagi's first reaction was to scream at the sight of the horrid creature, but luckily her battle computer had already switched on and caused her combat bracers to activate instead.

Kyle's first reaction was to order pizza. Of course, that was his first impulse in response to nearly everything that happened to him, so he had gotten used to ignoring it.

Rei's first reaction was a mental command to her crow familiar to intercept the monster as she wreathed the bird in magical flame.

The crow's first reaction was to send its master a reply viciously disparaging her ancestry, quite upset that Rei's first reaction involved lighting it on fire.

"Got it!" Ranma's rounded the corner a split-second later, immediately leaping for the monster as Asuka, Usagi and Rei all hesitated in their attacks.

"Pin her down!" Snake yelled, rounding the corner just as the pigtailed man tackled the creature to the floor.

"HYEEEEE!" The vile aberration hissed as it curled its blade-tipped tail up to skewer the man holding it to the floor.

Snake grabbed hold of the dangerous appendage, and then pulled hard, dragging the creature away from the others and eliciting an enraged screech from his captive.

"Easy there, Nancy! Down, girl!" The American shouted, making sure he had a firm grip on the slimy, sharp-edged vertebrae that made up the creature's tail. "Okay, I think we've got her!"

Rei took a moment to glare at her familiar (which had doubled around and landed on her shoulder, no longer immolated), and then turned a much shakier gaze on the monster and its captors. "What IS that thing?"

"Necromorph," Snake said obliviously as he held the creature's tail down near the end, keeping the blade from thrashing about. "Don't worry, she's not as dangerous as she looks."

"Heearaagaaargh!" the necromorph howled, its pointed teeth snapping viciously as it tried to bite Ranma's hands.

"It's... It's a 'she'?" Ami asked numbly. Really, there was a lot of better questions she wanted to ask, but it was the only thing she could currently think of while staring at the terrifying beast.

"Well, it was, at least. Say good night to the nice folks, Nancy, you're going back to your room!" Snake admonished. "Anyway, we checked the sub-levels pretty thoroughly, but we didn't find jack so far... hey, little help, Commander?"

Kyle, who looked to be completely unaffected by the whole incident, finally took action, walking up to the necromorph and carelessly grabbing one of its wrists.

Asuka, who had decided not to comment on any of this and just pretend like it never happened, called out as the three men started hauling the monstrosity back toward the elevator. "Saotome-kun, you're staying here. I have a job for you."

"Huh? Oh, sure," Ranma stumbled away as he let go of the alien-infested corpse, dodging awkwardly as it lashed out at him the moment it was free. He got away unscathed though, and cast a worried glance back at Kyle, who didn't seem to notice when the creature bit onto his leg and started chewing.

Once Snake, Kyle, and the space zombie that she absolutely REFUSED to acknowledge (the thought of zombie aliens was far too ridiculous) had left, she cleared her throat meaningfully. "Now that all three of you are here, Saotome, Tsukino, and Hino, I can brief you on your first mission. Follow me, please."

The police captain turned and went back into the briefing room, and was soon followed by everyone else, although Usagi and Ami still looked a bit shaken.

"This is going to be your target," Asuka said, bringing up two images on the projector screen on the wall. One was an image of a building taken from an attractive angle that Ami recognized from the Wraith Labs company web site. The other was a map of downtown Tokyo, where the lab was located.

"Take note of the road map and plot your course of travel. Your mission is extensive recon of Wraith Laboratories' corporate headquarters. Your mission will be complete when you feel you've gathered enough data about the level and quality of their defenses, as well as identified any obvious terrorist activity around the building. Your secondary objective will be to access the structure itself and get information about the whereabouts of Alexandra Tokima, any of their top scientists, or General Igov Yuchtzky."

Asuka hit a button, and images of the former and latter individuals appeared on the screen over the previous pictures. "Do you all remember these individuals?"

Ranma, Ami and Rei nodded, while Usagi frowned at the picture of Alexandra.

"I remember the Russian guy, but not her," Usagi said, pointing at the image in question.

"We've never actually met her before, but that's General Tokima of the Freedom's Angels," Ami explained.

Usagi nodded in understanding. "Ah, I see! So...the Freedom's Angels are the bad guys, right?"

Everyone turned to stare at her.

"Usagi-chan," Rei said in that trembling voice of hers that let everyone know she was seconds away from throttling somebody, "those are the bastards that turned you into a cyborg, remember? This is all part of the plan to get back at them."

Usagi's eyes widened. "OH! Them! I'd completely forgotten!"

_WHAM!_ Rei slammed her forehead on the table as Ami groaned, and her crow familiar cawed loudly.

"Honestly, I'm completely over it," Usagi said, raising one fist into the air and gripping her bicep. "It was a difficult adjustment, obviously, but being a cyborg is really a lot of fun once you get used to it!"

"What about your boyfriend?" Ranma said dubiously, remembering that her break-up had been one of the things she was most distraught about previously.

"Saotome-san is right," Ami said urgently, "I haven't seen Mamoru around nearly as much since the conversion. What are you going to do about him?"

Usagi shrugged. "I'm sure if I just give him enough time to himself he'll come around. I'm still me, after all! Besides, if my destiny to be with him were endangered at all, Setsuna would be all over it."

* * *

"Get _Whack!_ off _Whack!_ of _Whack!_ me _Whack!_ you _Whack!_ Warp _Whack!_ spawned _Whack!_ pervert!" Sailor Pluto snarled, punctuating each word with a punishing swing as she clubbed the tentacle wrapped around her leg with the Garnet Rod.

* * *

"Well, be that as it may," Asuka finally interrupted, looking annoyed, "this plan has been some time in the making, and the data that needs to be recovered will be invaluable for DAPC operations as well. So if you don't mind, I'm going to move forward with the briefing."

Everyone nodded hastily.

"During this mission, stealth is a top priority, which is why I'm sending you three. Tsukino-san, you have a cloaking module, correct?"

Usagi nodded happily, always pleased whenever she got to be useful.

"Excellent. These are the mission parameters: you are not authorized to use lethal force on this mission. Not everyone who works for Wraith is a bad guy, and not all of the bad guys at Wraith are terrorists, so you do not have permission to end anyone's life. This is STRICTLY recon. On that note, the mission will be aborted at once if any sort of alarm is sounded. Understood?"

The three officers nodded. Then Ami cleared her throat.

"If it's all right, I'd like to accompany them, Captain," the genius Senshi said softly.

Asuka frowned. Not because of the request, but rather because her own cousin was addressing her more formally than Usagi, her subordinate, did. "Do you have any notable stealth abilities?"

"No, but I can gather intel from a distance and coordinate them with my computer," Ami explained. "I won't have to get any closer than a few buildings away."

"Sounds good," Asuka said cautiously, "although you recognize that you're going in your capacity as a vigilante, not as an officer. If you get into trouble, my subordinates will NOT risk their own lives to save you."

Ami blinked, and then glanced over to the others before turning her gaze back to her cousin. "Actually, I'm pretty sure they would."

"Of course!" Usagi said brightly.

"You can bet on it," Rei nodded.

"It's kind of what I do," Ranma agreed, shrugging.

Asuka gave them an annoyed glance, though it was difficult to be too upset about them being unwilling to leave a friend behind to die. It was the principle of the thing, damn it! "Okay, fine. Do what you want. But Ami-chan's assistance aside, you three will be on your own for this operation; I need to get some sleep, so I can't be there to micromanage you, but I have full faith that you'll be able to pull through this operation without a hitch."

Rei and Ranma looked surprised at the idea, while Usagi puffed up her chest with pride.

Asuka stared at them for a moment, and then shook her head. "Okay, that was a lie. But I DO have full faith that when you screw up, Saotome-kun will manage to get everybody out of there safely."

Ranma nodded approvingly as the girls deflated. "Yeah, I'm pretty good at that." His record wasn't QUITE one hundred percent; Rei was undead proof of that, but that hadn't turned out TOO badly in his opinion.

"All right, briefing's over! I want you suited up and on the streets, pronto! Go!"

* * *

It was almost nine o'clock in the evening when Rayden Shikodan stepped up to the front gates of the Fifth National Church of Christ, a fairly large church that served a district on the edge of Tokyo proper.

If anyone had asked Rayden for details, he honestly couldn't have given them; he hadn't been directed to this place, but rather he was... guided. As if something was calling to him.

After looking the place over for a few seconds, it was obvious, to him at least, why he had come. The holy temple had been ransacked and desecrated, with the gates and a few monuments sitting in the small yard in front of the temple cracked and twisted. The streetlights in the area surrounding the church had been shattered, cloaking the the house of worship in an eerie and isolated darkness. A police cruiser was parked on the side of the road, its lights active as they splashed the shadows intermittedly with red and blue. It was not lost on him that there were no police in sight, and that the building interior was dark.

But what was most damning - and that was the exact word that the gunman used in his head - was that every cross on the premises had been defiled; the crosses had either been destroyed, or they had twisted bits of metal added to them in various ways, attached diagonally across the center of the crosses.

To that effect, most of the crosses now resembled star-shapes with eight points.

Rayden hefted Judgment over his shoulder and grasped the crucifix hanging from his neck as he approached the heavy, partially splintered doors of the church and kicked them open.

_Crack!_ The door fell apart instantly, reduced to shattered planks and wood shards that scattered across the floor of the temple.

Rayden showed no hesitation stepping into the building, his eyes narrowing even as he peered into the blackness in front of him.

_Foof! Foof! Foof!_ Two by two, candles mounted on the ends of each row of pews started spontaneously lighting up across the church, starting with the rows nearest Rayden, gradually bringing the level of light from nil to dim.

Seeing a scene such as the one before him would have shaken any sensible man, courageous or cowardly, but fear was beneath Rayden, a privilege of the innocent and weak. His expression did not change, and his heartbeat remained steady.

The entire interior of the church had been thoroughly desecrated, and not in the sense of simple vandalism or mindless destruction; no, the forces at work here had much darker designs that vandalism, and were very far from mindless.

Blood and human remains were strewn across the floor in almost, but not quite, random patterns, leaving great streaks of blood and gore that decorated the stone floor of the holy place. The walls had been similarly decorated, but far more carefully, with messages scrawled in blood all over. Half of them were in Japanese, but seemed to be insensible, grammarless rantings, while the other half were drawn in symbols that were clearly not belonging to any of the major Asian writing systems.

Interspersed with the writings were many symbols that Rayden recognized instantly, though he had seen it only once before, right before Ran had been consumed by dark power: an eight-spoked wheel with the spokes ending in arrows.

But even more disturbing than the state of the church interior were the only two living creatures that dwelt within, each of them seeming to ignore Rayden's entrance in favor of their current activities.

One was clearly a monster of some sort. It resembled an enormous wolverine, easily four feet in height and twice that in length. Its fur was thick and firm to the point that the bristles resembled thin needles, and its eyes were perfect, glossy black orbs within its slightly misshapen sockets. The beast was laying in a pile of torn and chewed-up human corpses, and was currently busying itself shredding the flesh of an arm that had been removed from its owner, hopefully post-mortem. Rayden noticed that there were a pair of police hats among its feed pile.

Despite the obvious threat posed by the monster, Rayden immediately decided that the second occupant of the room was far more dangerous. At the far end of the church, kneeling at the altar, was a young nun who looked to be no more than fourteen years of age. She wore a habit typical of women in her profession, although it was slightly torn and spattered with blood.

Of course, what made her most ominous, besides the almost palpable aura of hate and darkness swirling around her, was the altar she was kneeling in front of.

Like the other crosses on the premises, this one had been converted to the strange and repellant eight-spoked wheel, and it was obvious that the likeness of Jesus that was attached to the symbol had been torn off and discarded. Aside from that, three symbols had been scorched into the pillars surrounding the altar, each one burning with a flame that defied any attempt by Rayden to determine its color.

One was an X with a horizontal line through the middle, and a block underneath, making it vaguely resemble a skull.

One was a hook with the top trailing off in a wavering curl, like a flame.

The final one was a simple patern of three blazing circles, arranged in a triangle.

"Grrh... nhhrg..." the daemon finally finished its latest feast, and its blood-stained, dagger like teeth clenched as it pushed away the bone and scraps with its snout.

Rayden stepped forward, and the daemon promptly stood up before stepping out into the center aisle, growling ferociously.

The Catholic gunman seemed to take no notice of the beast, and continued forward with his eyes locked on the nun's back.

After several seconds of Rayden approaching and the monster snarling, the daemon started to back away, its eyes seeming to shrink in their sockets.

"It's afraid of you," the nun said suddenly, standing up. "How amusing..."

Rayden stopped dead at the sound of her voice, halting just a few rows of pews from the altar. The daemon stood in front of him just out of arm's reach, bristling and baring its bloody teeth.

"All who would do this should fear retribution," the vigilante said grimly, "whether mortal or divine, vengeance will be had for this affront, I assure you."

"Ah, it seems you're a true believer. Interesting," the girl said conversationally, still facing away from the intruder.

Rayden cast a gaze down at the daemonic beast standing in his way, and then snorted contemptuously before glancing back up at the nun. The daemon flinched at the dismissal, almost seeming hurt by it.

"It seems you were once a true believer as well. Tell me child, how does one fall so far as to take to butchering her peers in their place of worship and summoning fell beasts?"

"It doesn't take much," the nun answered, finally turning around. "The voices were there, offering me the truth. I simply had to stop begging at the feet of worthless idols and listen."

The girl's face was far too human for Rayden's liking. She had simple brown hair cut to just above her shoulders, and an unblemished, heart-shaped face. Even in the middle of this slaughter, after having accomplished such evil, she looked no different from hundreds of nuns that Rayden had met, save for the blood on her dress and her eyes.

Her eyes... seemed human at first, but were tinted yellow, and the outside edge of the iris was frayed, as if the yellow taint was spreading to the rest of the organ. And that was merely the strict visual interpretation; within the depths of those eyes was an intelligence and will that no human should possess. Her eyes looked over the Russian orphan... and then looked into, and finally THROUGH him. After one sweeping glance, Rayden could tell, this girl knew him inside and out, her gaze having unraveled his mind and soul.

"You're an interesting one. It's rare to find faith so... flawed, yet resolute. Chaos will find no purchase on your soul," she said, still keeping her tone maddeningly pleasant.

"It is a shame it found purchase within yours," Rayden murmured, still not stepping forward.

The nun shrugged. "I grew tired of calling upon stone idols and empty air to fix my problems," she explained as she stepped down off the altar, coming up behind the daemon beast and running a hand down its back. "It's not complicated. Your god does not exist. My gods do. I call to them and they answer. I give to them and they give back. I do their bidding and they reward me with power."

"I would rather pray to my own imagination than the monstrosities that call upon you to do... this," Rayden nudged his chin slightly. "Your gods, real or not, are mad."

The nun raised an eyebrow, and then her lips curled into a smirk as she started chuckling. "Heh heh heh! Mad? You know nothing of madness!" And then her mirth ceased, and she stared at Rayden seriously. "You may be a deluded paladin of a dead order, but your strength is at least worth noting, if not your sense. I am Yumika, Herald of Chaos. And tonight, Shikodan-san, you get to live. It is a gift I reserve only for the strong... and even then, not something I offer lightly."

The fallen nun moved past the daemon, shifting casually to one side to pass by the Russian super-soldier.

Rayden tensed as Yumika stepped past him, feeling the urge to attack the girl, to punish her for what she had done.

Ultimately, however, he did nothing as she stepped past.

The reason was simple: he couldn't beat her. His mind, his soul, even his unshakable faith all screamed at him that an attack upon the herald would be a useless gesture, much like a dog biting at a tank. The simple logic of it scalded him, rooting him to the spot and preventing him from lifting a finger. And so he let her go, fuming wordlessly at his helplessness as the instigator of this atrocity strolled outside.

The candles flickered briefly, and the daemon in front of him growled loudly. Staring up at the altar, Rayden watched as the flames the made up the various Chaos symbols died, their energies spent.

"This place will have to be cleansed," the gunman mumbled, flipping one of his miniature bombs into his palm. "I may not be able to stop the girl, but there are still many things to be done." Finally, he regarded the daemon, his eyes narrowing. "Your destruction among them. Come, beast. You have blighted this world long enough."

The daemon lunged.

* * *

"Cyber Moon to Flame Fangs, this is Cyber Moon to Flame Fangs, do you read me? Over," Cyber Moon said, her sensor fins-slash-bunny ears twitching as they relayed her radio signal.

"Usagi, stop that," Rei replied, irritably adjusting her radio headset.

"Negative Flame Fangs, I do not copy. Please repeat, over."

Rei's eyebrow twitched at the sound of Usagi's voice crackling in her ears. "Stop CALLING me that."

"You should end your messages with over, over," the cyborg responded.

"Cyber Moon, stop using your radio," Ranma deadpanned. "We're right next to you."

Finally turning her head toward the others, Cyber Moon pouted. "I was just practicing!"

As Sailor Mercury shook her head, the four of them made a particularly tall leap to the next building, landing next to a large, delicate-looking skylight.

Well, Mercury and Ranma leapt. Cyber Moon and Rei simply flew, and it was only due to a quick yank by the latter that the former didn't accidentally land on the skylight and crash through it.

Sailor Mercury glanced around briefly. "All right, we're almost there. I'll do a scan before we go any further; it's possible that they have something deployed that can detect our approach." She pulled out her computer and went to work.

"Good, so long as we have a moment..." Rei said, turning to glare at Usagi. "'Flame Fangs'? 'FLAME FANGS'? I am NOT going to let you call me that!"

Cyber Moon blinked. "Okay, well, what should we call you, then? Firebat? Sailor Blood? Draculass?"

Ranma winced as Rei obviously struggled to restrain her urge to maim her friend.

"I'm Sailor Mars! If I absolutely HAVE to have a stupid superhero name, Sailor Mars is fine!" The vampiress insisted.

"But you're not Sailor Mars anymore! We can't call you that!" The blonde insisted, her expression unusually firm. "And you definitely need a code name! What if the bad guys use your real name to track down where you live?"

Rei glared at her.

"Oh. Right," Cyber Moon mumbled sheepishly, remembering that the nosferatu currently rested underneath the DAPC HQ. "What if they use your identity to find your family?"

Rei kept glaring.

"Oh. Right. Uh... I was sorry to hear about your grandfather, by the way. The man was like a second father to me, really," the cyborg babbled, sweat starting to appear on her forehead. She had completely forgotten that the elder Hino had passed away months ago, and the rest of Rei's family might as well have gone with him for all the communication Rei had with them.

"Moon, maybe Rei doesn't need a code name just yet," Ranma offered, noting that the undead Senshi's stress seemed to have been building continuously since she got up that evening; he had dealt with the gifted midian's temper before, and was in no rush to do so again. "Now really isn't the time to deal with that, anyway."

Cyber Moon frowned. "Well, you DEFINITELY need to get a new outfit," she admonished, her gaze running up and down the vampiress. "Running around fighting in a slinky evening gown is fine for villains, but you're a police officer now! I mean, look at us!"

Cyber Moon, was, naturally, in her wetsuit-like combat outfit with her bracers already activated and ready for use. Ranma was dressed in a suspiciously similar outfit that he had called a "Manta Suit," and seemed to be a much thicker, but still form-fitting bodysuit with one of the DAPC's distinctive blue armor vests strapped on over it, along with his normal assortment of gear. He was also wearing the rebreather mask and extrasensory goggles that the girls remembered him wearing at the mortuary confrontation.

Rei actually dropped her glare to consider this. "You have a point, actually. Hold on."

Compared to her old transformation, or even Usagi's new one, the process of Rei changing her clothes was fast and simple. The woman was suddenly shrouded by flame, and before Moon even had time to yelp in surprise, the fire had vanished, leaving Rei's new outfit and a wisp of smoke.

"Hmm... how's this?" Rei asked, smiling slightly as she turned her head. The long dress had been replaced by a miniskirt, though it was still split on the side like the dress to show as much thigh as possible. Her upper body was covered, more or less, by a short vest that seemed to be an approximation of the standard DAPC officer's jacket, complete with the numerous pockets and patches but missing the sleeves and a good third of its material, leaving her arms and belly exposed. Her high heels had been replaced by far more comfortable, simple shoes with a short heel, which everybody present found ironic since she could now fly at will.

On top of that... well, there was nothing on top of that. That was it. The outfit was entirely blue, matching the color of Ranma's chest armor, and easily exposed more skin than Sailor Mercury did. The vest wasn't even zipped up all the way and clung tightly around Rei's breasts, showing impressive amounts of cleavage.

Of course Ranma was the first one to speak, his brain deciding right away that it had been too long since he'd said something stupid. "You look like a stripper."

_Fwoosh!_

Moon and Mercury winced as Ranma shouted and flailed about, trying to put out the fire on his arm.

Sailor Mercury decided that Ranma's line of thought did warrant some kind of explanation, though she made sure to be more diplomatic about it. "Well, it is rather... daring. As was your other outfit, actually. If you can manfiest whatever clothes you want, why do you choose clothing that's so... immodest?"

Rei frowned as she glanced down at herself. "I spent more than half a decade fighting evil in high heels and a miniskirt. It comes naturally to me at this point."

For the life of them, the other two women couldn't think of anything to say to that.

"So what's the status on the enemy base?" Ranma asked irritably, smoke still wafting off of his left hand.

Sailor Mercury blinked as she remembered what she had been doing. "Oh! Right. I'm actually reading a number of contacts on the buildings surrounding the corporate headquarters. They're hard to detect, so I can't figure out exactly what they are, but I'm reading a constant data feed back to the building. Whatever they are, they're connected to Wraith, and they'll probably sound an alarm if they sight you or the data feed suddenly stops."

"So we can't let 'em catch us and we can't take 'em out, huh? No problem," Ranma said, smirking. "Can you two do your thing from here, or do you need to be closer?" he asked, looking at Mercury and Rei.

"I'm fine where I am," the Senshi of ice assured him.

Rei still looked miffed, but nodded silently.

"Good. You ready to go, Cyber-chan?"

Cyber Moon saluted eagerly, her sensor fins perking up. A moment later several matchbook-sized nodes started sliding out of compartments on various points on her body. A moment after that, the blonde's cloak activated, and her body vanished into a barely discernable shimmer.

Sailor Mercury nodded approvingly, adjusting the radio headset that she had obtained for this mission. "All right, then we're all set. Good luck, you two."

"Thanks," Ranma said before turning toward Rei.

"What?" The vampiress asked irritably.

"Geez, did it bother you THAT much?" the pigtailed man asked. "I was just kidding around."

Rei looked conflicted. "Well..."

"If it makes you feel any better, you make a really cute stripper."

This time Ranma managed to dodge the retaliatory fireball, slipping into the Umi-sen Ken cloak as he chuckled under his mask.

* * *

Snake shook his head as he looked over the racks of inert alien eggs, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.

Or, at least, nothing more out of the ordinary than the normal assortment of abominations that were stored in the sub-levels.

"Well, I haven't seen a thing and I'm out of ideas on where to look. We've got nothing," the American said, scratching the back of his head.

Kyle nodded drowsily. "Can we leave yet? It's cold down here and I'm getting sleepy."

Snake frowned, not turning away from the storage area. "Yeah, it's fine. I'll be right behind you."

As Kyle left for the elevator, Snake started moving down the entire row of unhatched monstrosities, poking them one at a time and watching carefully for a reaction.

"I swear, Hino should be ashamed," Snake mumbled, tapping three eggs in quick succession and getting no response. "One of the most powerful undead beings in existence, and she's jumping at shadows and sending us down here to hunt down bogeymen. Lame."

Grimacing, he tapped the last egg in the row, only to freeze when it twitched in response.

_Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!_

Snake raised his sidearm so that he could observe what used to be a complete egg, the only sound in the room being the soft clink of spent ammo casings bouncing along the floor.

Seeing that there wasn't much left of the egg besides bits of bony shell and gobs of green goo mixed with what he assumed was flesh, Snake turned on his heel and started to walk away.

"Hey, what's with the shooting?" Shouted Kyle's voice from the next hall.

"It's nothing!" Snake replied. "Just some... huh?"

Snake froze in place, feeling a bizarre tingling on his ankle. At the same time, he felt a... presence in the back of his mind, like a voice whispering serenely to him.

His eyes narrowed, and the voice elicited the mental approximation of a fearful gasp.

Snake whirled around as the presence vanished, his pistol in one hand and his combat knife in the other.

To his annoyance, he found nothing. He was in the middle of the room, surrounded by empty floor, with nothing around to touch him and nothing close enough to provide any sort of cover for something to ambush him.

Except, perhaps, for the water drain next to his foot.

The American frowned.

* * *

It was getting desperate. Very desperate.

At this rate, it wasn't even sure how much longer it could survive without sustenance, although it didn't really think about it in such... complex terms.

All it knew was the hunger. The need for a body. The feeling of incompleteness that gnawed at it constantly, leaving a bigger and bigger hole with every passing moment.

This place was full of bodies, full of creatures, but they were... odd. Many of them felt unusual or unsuitable, and most of them were either comatose or dead.

It had been very confused when it first made contact with a body that was not comatose, but turned out to be dead. It was a bizarre feeling to sense this, but it became less bizarre as it found others that were similar.

It was forced to leave its first contact, as it was unsuitable. Dead flesh could not sustain it. The mind had been interesting, strong, and somewhat sympathetic, but this was a matter of survival.

And then, mere seconds ago, it had finally found a suitable creature... or so it had thought before making contact.

Dark, obscene bloodlust beyond anything it had known or imagined had surged through it when it had touched its potential host's mind, and for the first time in its existence, it knew fear. Not the fear of another creature, sensed on the edge of its perception, but fear for its own life, its own survival. One glance into that twisted mind, and it knew forevermore that it was mortal, that it was hunted, and that its time was rapidly approaching.

It wanted nothing more to do with that mind, even if the potential host would have it. It was likewise unsuitable. In some ways, more unsuitable than the walking dead.

A sudden disturbance!

It could feel something falling down toward it, tumbling through the narrow tube where it hid from the dark mind.

Something landed on it. An inorganic object. Hard. Thoughtless. Useless.

And very, VERY hot, all of a sudden.

* * *

Snake smiled to himself as the muffled explosion from the frag grenade faded from his ears, and then he replaced the drain cover over the drain hole.

"Hey! You coming or what?" Kyle shouted.

"Yeah, I'm coming! Calm down, already!" The American shouted back, dashing down the halls as smoke rose from the holes in the drain.

* * *

Cyber Moon peered cautiously over the edge of the roof, discretely searching for any sign of the objects that Mercury had detected before.

She found the "object" immediately. In the middle of the roof was one of the shapely android women that the Senshi had fought before, standing absolutely still as it stared off into the distance.

**Scanning... Mk. II all-purpose android. Combat threat: minor. Armaments: Enhanced limb strength thanks to hardened alloys and enhanced servo-motors in joints. Possesses low-grade impact armor and limited combat programming. This unit is currently in low-power mode, although its sensors are active.**

Cyber Moon quickly ducked beneath the edge of the roof and then lowered herself down the wall, her hands and feet sticking to the wall with ease.

Once she felt she was a good distance away, she activated her internal communicator. "Hey, I found what's defending the HQ! It's those android girls!" She whispered excitedly. "They're in some kind of power-save mode, but they're still watching for trouble. Over."

_Androids? Kind of an expensive substitute for cameras, don't you think?_ Asked Rei incredulously.

Mercury's voice followed a moment later. _True, but cameras may be difficult to place and hide on buildings that don't belong to Wraith. In addition using combat droids means that their sensor net doubles as their first line of defense._

Cyber Moon pouted. "You guys! You're supposed to say 'over' at the end! Over."

She heard a pair of sighs, and then Mercury spoke again, ignoring her.

_Saotome-san, what's your status? What does the building perimeter look like?_

Silence.

_Saotome-san? Are you there? Ranma, come in!_ The Senshi of ice's voice grew increasingly distressed as she got no response.

_Quiet..._

The voice was so weak that Moon mentally decided to crank up the volume a bit.

"Ranma-kun, are you okay? Over."

_Y-Yeah... uh... I'm in, actually..._ Came Ranma's response, only barely more audible now that it was louder.

Cyber Moon blinked. 'That was fast.' "Where are you now? Over."

_Um... not important. Can't talk now. Later._

* * *

As Ranma's trembling hand switched off his radio headset, one thought was at the forefront of his mind, throbbing in tune with his panicked heartbeat.

'How the HELL do I keep ending up here?' He asked himself, his face pale beneath the goggles and mask, themselves cloaked by the Umi-sen Ken.

Above his crouched body was an open window, roughly three feet by three feet in its parameters, which had been his obvious point of entry. He had worried, in fact, that it was too obvious. What if it led into a chemical storage bay or some kind of mutant pen to kill any would-be infiltrators?

Of course, Ranma could have handled either of those things, so he barely hesitated. As it turned out, however, the window led to somewhere much, much worse.

Which is why Ranma once again found himself in the women's locker room.

In a corporate headquarters.

That was nearly full of women changing their clothes and showering.

At nine o'clock at night.

'This is ridiculous! Aren't these people afraid to go home at this time of night? It wasn't THAT long ago that we had vampires running around eating people!' Ranma thought, feeling terror and a smidge of arousal surge through him at the dozens of bodies clad only in their underwear, if even that much. 'Why would they even HAVE a locker room in an office building? And why would the most accessible window on the ground floor lead to it? This makes no sense! This is-'

"Hey, who opened the window?" A woman in her thirties asked as she stepped out of a nearby shower stall, her towel in her hand. "It's too cold for that," she declared, reaching up to close it.

Ranma cringed as his first escape route was closed off, and then had to press his back firmly against the wall as the woman stepped by him.

He immediately tried to shake the image that had just been burned into his retinas as he slowly stood up, deciding that if he was going to sneak through the room, then he'd do so standing. Crouching made his profile smaller and made sneaking easier, but it also put his eyes roughly at groin level with a standing person. He REALLY didn't need that right now.

'Think quiet thoughts... sneaky thoughts... CLEAN thoughts...'

Ranma tiptoed past a few women putting on their skirts, and then froze as a feminine cry of surprise rang out.

"Hey! Gimme back my panties!" A younger woman shouted as a tall brunette held a pair of stringy black lace panties up in the air.

"Look everybody! Kana-chan has some sexy lingerie today! Got a date you'd like to tell us about?"

"It's none of your business! Give 'em back! I didn't bring any other underwear!"

"Not unless you spill!" The brunette laughed. "Ninomia, catch!" With that, she tossed the pilfered panties across the locker room.

Before the article got very far, it suddenly snapped back through the air, reversing direction and landing on its owner's shoulder.

There was a room-wide, synchronized blink.

"What the hell was that?" The brunette asked, perplexed.

_Slam!_ Everyone jumped in surprise as the door suddenly opened and closed rapidly, followed by more confused blinking.

The younger woman clutching her underwear frowned. "Did anybody else feel a sudden surge of unexplained feminine rage?"

There was much nodding.

"Huh. Weird."

* * *

Ranma swiftly moved away from the door to the hated chamber of pain and temptation, his hand moving up to his headset to switch the radio back on.

"Yo, Ranma here. I'm in the building and more or less safe now."

_Got it. For future reference, what entrance did you use?_ Mercury asked.

Ranma winced. "Uh... the... emergency exit," he lied.

_What? Those doors have alarms, Ranma!_ Rei chastised.

"Yeah. But... I silenced the alarms... using various amazing martial arts moves," he said quickly, lowering his voice as he saw an office worker emerge from a room ahead of him and turn away before walking down the hall.

_Martial arts moves? For neutralizing electronic alarms? That's ludicrous,_ suggested Sailor Mercury.

"Says the magical tech lady to the invisible Karate cop," Ranma deadpanned, stepping into the vacated office.

_Oh. Uh... point taken,_ the Senshi of ice said. Ranma could almost **hear** her embarrassed blush over the headset. He almost felt bad that she was actually right. Almost.

_So, seriously, nobody knows how to use walkie-talkies right except me? Over._ Cyber Moon griped.

Ranma switched off the headset.

"Hmmm... what do we have here?" Ranma mumbled quietly to himself as he moved through the darkened office, finally allowing his cloak to drop in order to let his body recover from the constant strain.

Turning on his goggles to low-light mode, he gently started shifting through the files on the desk.

'Accounting records, accounting records, expense reports, finance papers... great. Just some pencil-pusher's paperwork.'

He was about to go invisible and move on, but stopped. This mission was going to take all night if he had to search for relevant information room by room.

'Maybe this'll work?' He thought to himself, picking up a folder labeled "Payroll Breakdown". 'I'm supposed to find info on their workers, right? It's better than nothing.'

Taking the folder and storing it away, Ranma activated his cloak again and moved on.

* * *

Cyber Moon grunted as she climbed up the side of the office building, finally reaching the very top floor and not looking very enthusiastic about the feat.

Of course, she could have flown there easily, but Sailor Mercury had noted that the noise from her boosters would get her noticed easily, even if her cloak managed to hide the flare from the rocket engines.

Rei could have flown here easily AND noiselessly, but invisibility wasn't among the vampire's powers, apparently.

Which meant that she had no choice but to scale the thirty-story building. True, it was easy enough, but it was taking so long that she had finally gotten sick of having the Mission Impossible theme playing in her ear on infinite loop, and had turned it off. That alone made the whole infiltration much less exciting.

"All right... now what..." The cyborg Senshi was pressed flat against a large window that seemed to overlook the rest of the city, and on the other side was a lavish office full of expensive-looking devices and exquisite furnishings; in all likelihood the CEO's office.

_Click! Whrrrr..._ A pair of mechanical arms slid out of Cyber Moon's shoulders, each tipped with a tapered rod that ended in a shaped red lens. Not that they were visible at the moment.

_Fshzt!_ The laser cutters went to work, slowly slicing a fairly large plane of glass out of the window.

Cyber Moon cringed as the cloak shimmered unsteadily, the energy surges disrupting her invisibility slightly.

And then, after about twenty seconds, the laser cutters pulled away, sliding back into her shoulders.

Pressing her hand against the glass, the blonde cyborg stuck her palm to it, and then pushed the cut-out pane forward, sliding it free of the rest of the panel before gently lowering it onto the floor of the office.

Once inside, Cyber Moon breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, that wasn't too hard. Now what? Over."

_Look for a computer terminal. Also make sure to check the drawers and take any documents that look even remotely suspicious._ Sailor Mercury said. _Once you're into the computer, begin a full download. Especially make sure to ferret out any hidden drives or encrypted data._

Isn't that theft? Asked Rei's voice. _I mean, criminals are supposed to have rights and stuff related to searches and evidence seizures, right?_

Cyber Moon stopped, thinking it over. "Yes. So what?"

Just making conversation, Rei admitted. _Uh oh... the crows see some heavy equipment being moved around by the loading dock. It looks like some kind of robot. Guns are definitely a little big for corporate security._

Cyber Moon listened carefully to Rei's update as she walked up to the desk, noting the sleek, cutting-edge monitor hanging from the ceiling and a touchpad keyboard built into the desk surface.

Finding a large circular button that looked important, she tapped it gently, and then smiled as the monitor promptly lit up.

_Huh... that's weird... I don't think the cargo is the robots themselves... there's something else that's being moved, and it looks like the bots are covering the delivery._

Cyber Moon stared blankly at the screen as it asked for a password, and then took a moment to recall what Ami had told her about using computers as a cyborg.

Smiling, she reached up into one of her hair buns and pulled out a USB cable before plugging it into a slot in the surface of the desk.

_Damn it, the jerk's trying to shoo the crow away. It can't get a good look at what's being transported. Some sort of machine._

Cyber Moon smiled as the password screen vanished on command, and she idly popped a Pez into her mouth as the monitor listed files for downloading. After a moment, she located several hidden drives behind layers of access codes that she didn't bother decoding, and then promptly added them to the list. Within seconds, dozens of progress bars filled the monitor screen.

_Whoa, something's got all the guys at the dock on their toes. Big guy coming through,_ Rei continued with her monitoring.

Cyber Moon finished the download, and then smiled happily as she began a program upload, idly tearing open the drawers of the desk and stuffing whatever was inside into her stomach compartment, deciding to sort them out later.

_Huh. Looks like a foreigner... wait... is that..._ Moon could almost FEEL the grimace on the other end of the communication. _Aw, crap! It's Yuchtzky!_

Bzrt! Sparks burst from the USB plug as it was yanked from the port, and Cyber Moon promptly dashed for the hole in the window.

* * *

"Well, is he DOING anything, or is he just grandstanding about while monologuing to himself?" Ranma asked as he stepped lightly through the halls.

He was fairly tired at this point from the constant need for stealth, so he had actually dropped the Umi-sen Ken and was using more mundane sneaking tactics, relying on his senses to warn him if he was about to run into somebody.

_I think he's inspecting whatever it is that they're transporting,_ Rei answered. _Hell, you know what? Screw it. I'm sending a bird down there. What're they gonna do, gun it down?_

Ranma stopped and considered the question.

Then he moved faster.

* * *

Igov's cybernetic eye glowed in the dim light that illuminated the loading dock as he glanced over the device that was being carefully held up by two muscle-bound, genetically enhanced terrorists.

"Igov see no apparent damage. There were no impact during transport?" The cyborg asked.

"No, Sir. We kept it nice 'n steady, just as we were told."

Igov's scanners went active, inspecting the miniature chronosphere for any sign of tampering or damage.

After a few seconds of every human in the area standing nervously at attention, the Russian spoke again. "Very good. Take device to-"

"Craw! Craw!"

Igov blinked as a crow angled down over the top of the truck, flapping its wings wildly to slow its descent before landing right on top of the boxed chronosphere, its dark eyes staring up at Igov curiously.

"What the hell is with all these birds?" One of the guards mumbled, glancing to the side. "I can see three more watching from the wall. It's kinda creepy."

Igov's eyebrow rose. "Is... unusual to see bird late at night, no?"

"I guess," another terrorist mumbled, scratching the back of his head. "Not that we get a lot of crows in downtown Tokyo even in the daytime."

"Ah. Igov understand," the Russian said calmly, smiling down at the avian.

_Shwok!_ The men all blinked as the bird seemed to explode into blood and black feathers, courtesy of a lightning-fast backhand from their general.

"Uh... what was THAT about?" One of the men asked. "I mean, I don't like the filthy scavengers either, but-"

"I've no time," Igov said, snapping his hand repeatedly to the side to shake off some of the blood. "Take device inside. My aide will tell you where. Igov have... things to do."

* * *

Rei blinked repeatedly. "Huh. Well... glad I haven't started naming them yet," she said somewhat nervously.

_Rei, is something wrong?_ Sailor Mercury asked nervously. _What's the General's status?_

"Pissed off," Rei said promptly. "Also, and this is just a distant possibility, he MIGHT suspect that MAYBE all of the crows sitting around watching him aren't COMPLETELY innocent."

All at once, the nervous warnings of dozens of crows filled Rei's head as the androids on the roofs started to move.

"Okay, yeah. He's onto us. Ranma, Moon, get your asses out here!" She shouted into her headset.

_I'm out!_ Came Cyber Moon's voice. _It'll take some time to get down, though! Over!_

_Damn, I have to find another way out,_ Ranma groused.

"Can't you leave the way you came in?" Rei suggested reasonably.

_No way! They'd kill me!_

Rei blinked. "Who would kill you?"

_Er... N-Nobody..._

The vampiress might have pressed the matter, except that her visions from the crows watching Igov had informed her that the man had vanished in a burst of blue and white light.

"All right, I lost him. He could show up anywhere, now. Mercury, I'm heading for you."

_Tak!_ Rei whirled about as she heard something land softly behind her, and her eyes narrowed as one of the android women slowly stood up, staring at her dispassionately.

"Okay, I guess that's not happening. One of the tin women here wants to play," Rei growled.

_Rei, no! We're supposed to retreat after we're discovered! And you're not authorized to use lethal force!_

"Not against humans, no," Rei admitted, smirking. "I'll just be taking out some trash while we wait for the others to get clear."

_Clink!_ Rei glanced over her shoulder as another android landed behind her.

_Rei, I'm serious! We don't know what they can deploy now that the alarm has gone off!_

"That's what we were here to find out, right?" Rei asked, relaxing her body as a third android bounded up onto the edge of the roof. "You worry about yourself, Mercury. You're still alive." Without waiting for a response, she turned off her headset.

"You girls are a bit high up to be taking a late-night stroll, aren't you?" Rei asked, crossing her arms under her breasts.

"Unit faction identified: DAPC. Delta-class security threat," one of the androids said, her voice perfectly human-sounding even if the words and tone were precise and robotic.

"Unit identity unknown. Containment questionable. Awaiting response..." the android behind her said.

"Unknown unit type identified," the third android said, her voice gaining a sudden edge to it. "Midian. Executing extermination protocol seven-two-two."

"Sheesh, I feel like I'm not even part of this conversation," Rei mumbled, glancing down at her open palm as a small, flickering flame appeared within it.

As one, the androids bolted forward, blades emerging from their wrists.

Rei promptly shot up into the air, the flame in her palm staying behind near the roof as the cybernetic assassins drew close.

_FWOOM!_ The flickering blaze suddenly expanded into a considerable fireball, and the androids immediately dove away even as the flame lashed out at them. Ultimately they all escaped serious damage, and promptly scattered again to divide up Rei's attentions.

The vampiress quickly summoned two crows to her, the dark birds circling briefly before they were both suddenly engulfed in flames. The creatures didn't seem to be in any pain from being immolated (though Rei would inform anyone who asked that they absolutely HATED being on fire), and they promptly dove toward two of the androids as Rei shot through the sky toward the third one.

She doubted the familiars would do much more than stall the other robots, but Rei wasn't worried. She had been wanting to test her powers against something that she actually wouldn't mind killing, and a bunch of expendable enemy machines were just about perfect.

The android leapt back as a trio of burning talons sliced through the air, creating three thick scorch marks across her chest. The moment it touched the roof again it surged forward, its body twisting to add power to the lunge.

Rei had been caught slightly off-guard by the instant reversal in movement, but managed to turn so that the blades on the cyborg's wrist stabbed deep into her abdoment rather than her heart.

She didn't waste time wondering that the machines apparently knew a vampire's weak point, and instead grabbed hold of the android's arms with her own, seemingly unaffected by her wound.

Rei's eyes flashed crimson. "Too easy." _HWOOOSH!_

As she stared smugly into the massive pyre that had engulfed her opponent, she was informed by her earlier distractions - via a burst of pain and a string of profanities - that the other androids were charging for her again, having dealt with her familiars.

Rei turned to face them still holding her victim, the smoking column of flames rotating around her body even as burnt pieces of metal and bits of melted plastics fell to the roof from the conflagration.

"Here. Catch."

_BOOM!_ Suddenly the body she was holding exploded toward the other two androids, sending a shallow burst of flame and several burning limbs and pieces of machinery flying at them.

The robots battered away the projectiles, advancing methodically even as their clothes crumbled to ash and areas of their faux flesh bubbled and melted away.

Before the pair could get into striking distance, Rei bolted backward through the air again, one arm drawn back as the other pointed toward her foes.

_Fwoosh!_ A lance of flame swirled into being across her cheek, appearing in the air between her two hands.

_Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!_ Almost as an afterthought, nine more appeared all around her, one by one, holding in the air parallel to the first.

"Blazing Rain!" The vampiress shouted, the firebolts suddenly launching forward.

The androids' responses were instantaneous, and suddenly the two mechanical women were dashing away as the burning projectiles curled through air to home in on them.

With five arrows to a target, it didn't seem like either of the androids had much hope, but the first one suddenly twisted and jumped just as the first of the arrows was almost on her, launching herself into the air and tucking her body into a somersault as the fiery missiles curved and snaked uselessly to try and tag their prey. As the android finished her stunt and landed in a crouch, the fire arrows seemed to lose their sense of where their target was, and most of them swerved pointlessly and exploded against the roof while a few zoomed off into the air as they dissipated.

The other android wasn't nearly so lucky, and one of the projectiles stabbed into its leg as it tried to dive over the edge of the roof. As the impacted limb exploded in a burst of fire and scorched machinery, the other four fire arrows converged into the android's back.

Rei didn't bother watching the second robot's fiery end, keeping her eyes locked on the survivor. "Well, you're a tricky one, aren't you? How to take you down... fire talons? Fire gate? Or maybe I'll just grab you and tear you limb... from..." she trailed off as the android suddenly turned away and jumped, obviously in full retreat.

"The hell? Did they program those things with self-preservation instincts or something?" the undead Senshi wondered.

"C-Caw..."

Rei's eyes widened, and she whirled around.

Standing at the edge of the adjacent roof was Igov, looking as implacable as ever as he gazed at the nosferatu before him. In his hand one of Rei's crow familiars gasped from within the Russian's grasp, too weak to do much more than uselessly question the general's sexuality.

_Crack!_ As Igov idly crushed his captive into a feathery pulp, Rei had to struggle to dredge up some sympathy for her helpless servant; honestly, she might have done the same thing if such a comment was directed at her.

Still, the birds WERE on her side, and she was fairly certain that Igov couldn't have understood it anyway, so she made a good attempt at being outraged as her eyes narrowed.

Igov, for his part, had no idea what to make of what he was seeing. He had only really suspected something because he had accidentally scanned the crow that had landed in front of him with the same sensors he used to check the chronosphere, detecting a string of inexplicable energies he was utterly unfamiliar with.

He hadn't taken the idea that the birds were being used as spies seriously. Obviously, that was a mistake.

However, the concern of little animals intruding upon important secrets seemed paltry and insignificant compared to what he was seeing now.

He was looking at a vampire.

Who was also, if his scanners and memory were correct, a Senshi.

And judging by her rather scandalous uniform, she was also a member of the DAPC.

His week had been going so WELL, too...

"It seem that DAPC hiring practice has changed," the general said suddenly, sighing as he fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket. The fact that the hand he was using was still sticky with avian blood didn't seem to bother him. "Now they recruit witch and corpse to their side. Inconvenient."

"Inconvenient? INCONVENIENT?" Rei repeated, baring her fangs as she snarled. "That doesn't even BEGIN to describe what I'm going to do to you, bastard!" Rings of arcane script, written in flame that glowed fiercely in the moonlight, appeared around her arms as the seething furnace within her soul burned hotter, demanding destruction.

Igov calmly turned to the side as a trembling beam of hot plasma blasted by him, scorching his coat and tearing into the roof he was standing on, carving a path of molten rubble. As the light faded, he idly stuck his cigarette into the superheated air the attack had left behind, smirking when the tip promptly lit ablaze.

"Interesting. You seek to challenge me? Here?" Igov took one look at the woman's suddenly uncertain look and shook his head, sticking the cigarette between his lips. "Igov wonder how many more rodents scurry about in shadows, waiting for ambush."

"Only one way to find out, right?" Rei taunted, her hand lighting ablaze. 'Let's see... he can teleport, but his reaction time is slow. If I just stay out of grappling range...'

Blowing out a cloud of smoke, Igov thrust his right hand out toward the vampiress, activating his stasis module.

Rei, for her part, wasn't sure exactly what happened. The world seemed to go gray for a moment, and then suddenly Igov was a blur, his left arm bursting apart and reforming into a Gatling gun faster than she could track.

By the time the vampiress was moving to launch her fireball and evade the imminent burst of gunfire, the weapon had already finished warming up and then spat hundreds of bullets into her to rip apart strengthened flesh and send churned-up gore out her back.

When the color finally seeped back into the world and Igov's gun had stopped spinning, Rei was falling to the roof in pieces, her eyes wide and seemingly frozen in her head.

And then, in a burst of eldritch flame, she was gone.

Igov frowned as he raised his Gatling gun, reaching over to the elbow and releasing the switch that spilled out a waterfall of spent casings onto the roof he was standing on.

The flame that had surrounded his opponent had left a very deliberate and ominous-looking scorch mark on the roof where her remains had fallen, looking like some sort of arcane circle drawn in black soot. Aside from the burn marks and the lingering heat, there was no sign of his target save a simple radio headset.

"Hmph. The parasite escapes." Igov crushed the device under his boot, puffing on his cigarette as he organized the data from the androids that were still searching the area.

'I cannot risk a full-scale engagement so close to the office. If I have driven them back, that will have to do for now,' the Russian groused in his head, turning on his heel. 'As much as I would like to pursue the bloodsucker, it is likely she has allies nearby. This is a bad fight at a bad time.'

He took an especially long drag from his cigarette, slightly annoyed that it had burned down to the butt already; that plasma beam had burnt half of the stick away in the process of lighting it.

'Besides, the presence of a vampire working under the DAPC changes things. Considerably. I will not be caught unprepared again...'

With that thought, and a quick sweep of his cybernetic eye over the surrounding streets, Igov activated his chronosphere and vanished in a burst of light.

* * *

Sailor Mercury chewed her lip anxiously as she kept taking in readings from the surrounding area, her body hunched low next to an air conditioning unit to better hide from one of the androids that had leapt past a few seconds ago.

"Damn it, if she's going to be a police officer, Asuka had better pound some discipline into her! There's nothing stealthy about setting off explosions and lighting bonfires on top of buildings!"

After thinking about it for a few seconds, the genius Senshi groaned. Given the rest of the DAPC, actually, this sort of behavior seemed to be par for course, and she seriously doubted Asuka could reign in her hot-tempered comrade so easily.

'The worst part is that she turned off her headset, too! I can't even contact her to ask her what's happening! All I know is that she kept expending more and more power, and then her energy signature suddenly dropped to almost nothing! I can't even pinpoint her anymore!'

"Moon, Saotome, we have a problem," Mercury said anxiously, peeking out from behind her cover to see if there were any more androids jumping about.

_Does it involve huge beams of fire that turn night into day?_ Ranma asked over the radio. _Seriously, that one almost burned my eyes out before I managed to turn my goggles off!_

"You can see the battle? Saotome-san, I need you to go extract Rei. I don't know what happened to her, but we need to get out of here, and fast."

_Sure thing. See you in a bit._

Mercury found his casual tone somewhat grating, but pushed it out of her mind. "Cyber Moon, what's your status?"

_I'm almost there!_ The cyborg said.

Sailor Mercury blinked and stood up fully, looking all around. "Almost here? I don't see-"

_KROOM!_ The Senshi of Ice staggered and windmilled her arms as the ground next to her suddenly cracked, leaving an impact crater that quite obviously threatened the structural integrity of the roof.

"Gah! Moon, is that you?" Mercury demanded, regaining her balance.

"What? Of course it is... oh, right! Invisible! Duh." The distortion standing in the middle of the crater shimmered before revealing the cyborg Senshi looking embarrassed and scratching the back of her head.

"Moon, you have to be more careful about long falls from now on!" Mercury scolded. "You're in no danger, but you weigh too much to be leaping around like that!"

Cyber Moon's cheeks went pink as she adopted an almost painfully cute "angry" expression. "Don't call me fat!"

"I didn't call you fat, I said that..." Sailor Mercury trailed off and shook her head. "Oh, never mind. Just be on your guard and ready to fight or run at a moment's notice. Saotome-san is collecting Rei-chan," after turning away, she mumbled "Hopefully."

Moon's anger dissipated rapidly once it was obvious her fellow Senshi didn't want to press the issue, and she slowly turned back toward the Wraith HQ building, her eyes glowing a soft blue.

"Huh. It looks like the androids are going back to sleep," she mumbled.

Sailor Mercury quirked an eyebrow at her. "Really? After all this?"

"Uh... well... it looks like there are a lot more of them now," the cyborg girl said uneasily, "but they're not going anywhere. I guess they're afraid to chase us?"

"More like they're letting us go," Mercury quipped. "They have most of the advantages in this area, but the long-term consequences of deploying all their forces probably aren't worth the chance of killing us."

"Geez, don't be such a downer," came a muffled voice from behind the genius Senshi, causing her to flinch in surprise.

Mercury whirled around and leveled a tense stare at Ranma, who was standing on the edge of the roof holding Rei in his arms. The vampiress was trying her very best to look dignified, which was hard enough to do in her current outfit **without** also being carried around by the masked police officer.

"Rei-chan, are you all right?" Cyber Moon asked, rushing up to the new arrivals. Certainly the woman looked fine, with no visible wounds or even a blemish, but she figured there must have been SOME reason why Ranma was carrying her.

"I'm fine! Fine!" Rei replied, though her reply was so agitated that it was hard to believe her. "The bastard just took me by surprise, that's all!"

"Bastard?" Mercury questioned uneasily as she vaulted off the roof and started moving away from their target, the others following immediately.

"She ran into Big Red himself back there. Didn't do so well," Ranma explained curtly, earning himself a fist on the head from the woman in his arms.

"Y-You fought Yuchtzky by yourself?" Cyber Moon stuttered, flying above the others at a constant altitude a few meters overhead.

"Hey, he's the one who attacked me!" Rei protested. "Well... sort of. I mean, he definitely would've attacked first if I hadn't."

"Rei-chan, that was incredibly reckless," Sailor Mercury admonished. "We were here to gather information, not pick fights with the enemy leaders."

Rei growled through clenched teeth. "You can't be serious! Did you really think I was going to let that asshole go when I got the chance to take him down?"

The other girls certainly seemed ready to protest, but Ranma's voice cut them off.

"I hear ya. If you'd managed to surprise him instead of the other way around, then we'd all be a lot better off," Ranma agreed, surprising everyone present.

Mercury frowned. "We were warned specifically AGAINST engaging the enemy here, never mind an enemy leader that's taken on all the Inner Senshi at once before. She-"

"Aw, relax, it all turned out okay, didn't it? She 'aint any deader," Ranma said, ignoring the vexed look from Mercury and the confused one from Rei. "The important thing is that the mission's done and we got what we wanted."

"That type of attitude is the reason my cousin drinks, you know," Sailor Mercury mumbled.

Rei snorted. "That's her excuse. What's yours?"

The genius Senshi flushed as she winced.

Ranma landed on the roof of a shop that had closed for the day, and then turned toward the women following him. "I'm gonna take Rei-chan back to HQ; you two should head home. The captain's gonna want to debrief you pretty early in the morning, so you need to get some sleep. I'll probably crash at HQ tonight."

Sailor Mercury spent a good long time analyzing the logic of that argument before she relented, nodding silently and taking off toward the college.

Cyber Moon hesitated, and then frowned at her two fellow officers. "Are you sure you should go back by yourselves? I could come too..." for some reason, seeing the vampiress in Ranma's arms like this, she didn't want the two to be alone together. She wasn't quite sure why.

"No reason for that," Ranma said, brushing aside her offer. "Besides, Hunter's at home tonight, so one of us needs to feed him tomorrow morning."

The blonde cyborg cringed at the thought, and then hung her head as she blasted away toward the house she and Ranma shared.

"You know, you can put me down at any time," Rei mumbled, casting a wary glance at her princess as she rocketed off into the distance.

"If you're sure," Ranma said casually, letting his arms drop.

He was honestly surprised when Rei dropped straight onto the roof with a yelp, landing painfully on her rear.

"Hey! What the hell was that?" The vampiress demanded, staring up into the bulky goggles protecting Ranma's eyes as she got to her feet.

"Uh... can't you fly? Like, at will?" Ranma asked, obviously perplexed that gravity had suddenly become an issue.

Rei fumed silently for several seconds before she snapped her head away, her long, night-black hair whipping around behind her. "Flying takes up a lot of energy and concentration, you know. I'll be fine on foot."

Without waiting for the pigtailed man to respond, Rei vaulted from the roof, landing on the building across the street. Then she broke out into a full sprint, bounding from roof to roof back toward the headquarters.

It didn't take much longer for Rei to make it to the DAPC headquarters, and she landed lightly in front of the steps leading up to the main lobby.

Walking up the stairs, she grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled, frowning when it didn't budge.

'Oh. Locked. Of course they would lock it if no one else was here, wouldn't they?' Rei thought, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"So I was right."

Rei turned her head to stare over her shoulder, her brow creasing as Ranma stood behind her, arms crossed over his chest. He had pulled off the goggles and the rebreather at this point, and Rei was inwardly relieved that she wouldn't have to keep staring into the glowing green lenses of those creepy goggles.

"Right about what? That I don't have a key yet?" The vampiress asked, annoyed.

"Key? Why wouldn't you just slip through the wall like normal?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow as he approached the midian. "If the fight took that much out of you, you shoulda said so."

"What? What makes you say that?" Rei asked warily, her hackles rising. It annoyed her to no end that Ranma could be so perceptive about certain things and so maddeningly oblivious to others.

"Normally you fly around like it's nothing," Ranma explained, pulling out his own key and unlocking the door, "and suddenly now you decide to stick to walking and jumping? And then there's the door. You can't hide it. Getting wasted like that took a lot out of you."

Rei snorted, though she could feel the facade crumbling. "Please. You think a hundred or so bullets could slow me down for long? Kimiko took way more than that and practically laughed it off, to hear Ami-chan tell it."

"Which is why I'm worried," Ranma said, opening the door for Rei to step through and following her.

"You didn't seem worried earlier," the vampiress mumbled, feeling her emotions swirling inside her. She didn't know whether to be mad, scared, or relieved that Ranma was talking to her about this. "Speaking of which, what was with you earlier? The first time we met, you were talking down to us about how big and bad Igov was and how we should just stay away from him! Now I try and roast him on my own and that's okay?"

Ranma scrubbed his head with his hand as he sighed. "Well, if you want me to be honest, I really don't think it's okay at all. But I've seen what you're capable of first-hand now. You can take care of yourself. Hell, you're the only one of us that can just regenerate and get right back up after she's ground to a bloody pulp! You don't need ME to look after you."

Rei frowned immediately. She didn't like the idea that Ranma wouldn't be protecting her. Nor did she like the idea that she didn't like the idea that Ranma wouldn't be protecting her. A rather annoying emotional paradox, to be sure.

"... Or that's what I thought at first," Ranma finally amended, shaking his head. "That fight was real short, and you're almost completely drained. And I think I know why."

The vampiress said nothing, meeting the man's eyes.

And then her eyes widened as he suddenly tugged on the collar of the manta suit he was wearing, pulling down the spandex-like material to expose his neck.

"Go ahead and have some. But not too much," he said, looking only slightly nervous.

Rei, for her part, looked absolutely shocked. "Wh-What? No! I'm not going to bite you! I was just joking in the elevator, there's no way!"

"I know you were teasing, but this is important," Ranma snapped. "Look, I'm no expert, but it sure seems to me that the cold stuff you get in the blood bags is nothing compared to fresh blood from a living body. Sure, it satisfies your hunger and keeps you going day to day, but you need more than that, Rei-chan."

The undead Senshi said nothing, simply gaping at the man in front of her. She got a terrible feeling he was right, but desperately tried to firm herself against the logic, trying to deny the unpleasant truth.

"I noticed it with Garo. When he actually took a bite out of ME, the guy went from barely conscious to supercharged in seconds. When he was drinking out of vials, he was just as happy, but there was no burst of energy. Transfusion blood isn't good enough for you, Rei-chan. Not if you want to stay strong enough to fight."

Rei trembled as she backed away from the pigtailed man, feeling surges of desire shoot through her. She knew he was right. It all made sense. She had suspected as much long before this talk. But that didn't make it right.

"No..." she whispered painfully, shaking her head. "I'm not going to do it. Not to you."

"Who else is there?" Ranma asked, obviously annoyed. "With your kind of power, you'd need to spend all night sucking people dry to keep yourself at full strength!"

"Then I won't fight at full strength!" Rei snapped back, gripping her hands into fists.

"Then you'll probably end up dead for real," Ranma growled, "and I 'aint gonna let that happen. So you can either drink my blood here, or you can see it splashed all over the ground after I save your ass."

Rei's expression was horrified, almost haunted. She knew what he said was true; he constantly wounded himself rescuing or taking hits for others, and had done so in his attempt to keep Ran from kidnapping her. There was hardly much need for Ranma to do that for someone who could regenerate from nearly anything, but as Rei had found out first-hand, the vampire's power was far from limitless.

"Why..." she whispered, hanging her head. "Why are you doing this? I haven't done anything but make your life and your job harder. I tried to KILL you, Ranma. Maybe I wasn't in the best state of mind then, but... I would've ended your life without a thought. What could make you go through all this for me?"

Ranma smirked. "I'm the best."

Rei blinked as she raised her head. "What?"

"You heard me," Ranma said haughtily. "I'm just the best there is. Fighting vampires, saving vampires, feeding vampires, whatever. I'll do it all and I'll still be there to help out everyone else, too. Because I'm the best, and I'll do whatever it takes to prove it." His expression turned more serious. "I said I'd take responsibility for what happened to you. That's not 'cause I feel sorry for you or because I think it was my fault you got turned. It's 'cause I wasn't good enough to come through when it counted. I'm doing all this because I want to prove myself."

Rei found herself stunned silent once again. The explanation was... unexpected, to say the least. It seemed incredibly shallow and arrogant at first, but when she actually thought of the sacrifices Ranma had made and the good he was doing it was rather difficult to accuse him of being self-serving.

Finally, she locked eyes with the pigtailed man and spoke. "Honestly... I was just hoping you were in love with me or something."

Ranma sweatdropped. "Uh... no. Not in love with you." He shook off the comment quickly, and then tugged on his collar again. "So, whaddya say?"

Rei gulped nervously as she approached him, her entire body heating up as she stared at his pulsing jugular. "J-Just tell me if I start drawing too much, okay?"

Her hands were trembling as she took hold of his shoulders, and she gave him an annoyed look as she realized that he didn't seem nearly as nervous, despite being the one about to have his blood sucked. "And I want you to promise me that you won't tell ANYONE about this."

"Yeah, yeah, I promise," he said negligently. "Let's hurry up, I'm a bit tired and this'll probably do me in for the night."

Rei was expecting to hesitate, to have to force her own mouth open to take the next step that would forever seal another part of her past as a human being. But her body reacted where her mind resisted, and before she had even realized it, her fangs gently sunk into Ranma's neck.

Ranma forced himself to relax past the initial pain of being bitten, and then calmly put his arms around the woman in front of him without really thinking about it.

The only way Rei could possibly describe the current situation was nirvana. Like before, her expectations had fallen far, far short of reality. She had been expecting blood to taste the same as it had before she was turned, except perhaps a bit more palatable. She had also been expecting her first feeding to be an awkward, unpleasant experience as she struggled with the thought of draining another person's lifeblood.

As it happened, however, the feeding was clean and sensual, as if she had done it a hundred times before. The blood itself didn't have a taste as she understood it from eating as a human; rather than having real flavor, the blood seemed to simply taste... euphoric. As if the crude mechanisms for sensing flavors and relaying information to the brain had been stepped over in favor of simply bombarding her brain with pleasure. She could honestly say that drinking blood from a person, or rather drinking blood from Ranma, was the most pleasurable, wonderful, and satisfying experience she'd ever imagined.

It was so amazing, in fact, that it completely distracted her from the fact that Ranma was gasping painfully and trying to gently pull her head away.

Rei quickly withdrew her fangs from the wound in his neck, although she hadn't pulled away before her donor stopped struggling and sighed in relief. Before she could really think about what she was doing, the vampiress started licking the wound clean, reveling in the wonderful taste.

"Ahhh... you... you done?" Ranma managed to gasp out, his body swaying dizzily. Rei had taken to her first feeding very enthusiastically, and he had been very reluctant in forcing her to stop. Given that (for once) he hadn't been injured at all during the mission, she had actually taken quite a good percentage of his total blood capacity, far more than Garo or Kimiko had managed. Such as it was, the sensation of her licking and kissing his neck was barely noticeable, and his mind was swimming under a curtain of crushing fatigue.

Rei reluctantly drew her lips away from his neck, and then released a shuddering breath as she glanced at the two holes that had already closed themselves up to prevent further blood loss.

"Y-Yes. I'm... I'm fine." She said carefully.

That was a lie, of course. Saying she was fine was like saying that the Pacific was damp. Not untrue, perhaps, but completely misrepresenting reality.

Rei felt PERFECT. As if all her doubts and concerns and problems, physical or otherwise, had been washed away in a crimson tide, leaving her truly complete for the first time in her life.

Her strength had returned above and beyond what she had felt when Ran had first granted her his power, and she had to quash an initial urge to immediately teleport back to Wraith Labs and reduce the entire building to smoking cinders, cyborgs and all.

As the man with his arms around her wobbled uncertainly, she felt a second urge strike her and decided that it was harmless enough to act on.

Without waiting for Ranma to regain his senses, Rei cupped his cheeks with her hands and then kissed him.

It wasn't a nervous kiss or a particularly passionate one, but rather... exploratory. Rei's tongue rolled about the interior of Ranma's mouth, tasting him carefully as she wrapped one arm around his back and the other around his head.

After several seconds of this the vampiress withdrew her lips, a sense of excitement fluttering in her chest coupled with a nagging disappointment.

'I thought he'd be a better kisser than that,' she admitted, sighing as Ranma's head slumped against her shoulder. 'Well, I guess I did catch him by surprise. Actually, I kind of caught myself by surprise, too. Still, you'd think he'd put a little more effort into it! I didn't HAVE to reward him like that, and it's not like he...'

It was about at this point that Rei noticed Ranma was unconscious.

* * *

Asuka yawned as she stepped out of the elevator and back onto the ground floor of the HQ, stalling her for a few seconds before she turned sharply to the right and headed toward her office and her precious, precious coffee.

It seemed apparent, after debriefing Rei, that the recon mission had gone well. Not great, but better than she had expected, really. Over the course of dealing with Snake and Ranma as her most capable officers, she had learned to stop giving them missions that required subtlety rather than destructive force.

Not that Ranma couldn't do subtle, but it wasn't his strongest suit, and he tended to end up in bizarre and explosive situations. Snake could do subtle... in the sense that if he tried REALLY hard, he could kill everyone with one big explosion rather than lots of little ones.

Her new officers opened up new possibilities and given her new tools and options to leverage. Obviously Rei wasn't one for subtlety any more than Snake, even though her abilities as a vampire were well matched to sneakier tactics. In contrast, Usagi didn't like violence and was reluctant to unleash fiery explosive hell even though her body was clearly designed for such rampant devastation.

Not ideal, but dealing with the flaws in her people was just another job when you're the leader.

Asuka paused after passing by the couch in the secondary office that her men had converted into a living room. Ranma was laid out over it, sleeping soundly.

She frowned. Asuka had no problem with Ranma sleeping in headquarters, but he was still in full gear, including the manta suit he had "borrowed" from his brief employment with Core. Strange.

Tiro had evidently arrived while she had been busy chaining up Rei's coffin, and was watching the news as he sat on the floor in front of the couch.

_It was revealed just a few days ago that the legislature has been preparing to take steps to significantly increase its military spending in light of the numerous disturbances within Tokyo._

Officials explained that much of the international aversion to allowing Japan to re-arm has weakened after the bizarre and unexplained occurences two weeks ago in which massive, dark cloud cover spread all over the planet, now referred to as "Black Dawn". Although the phenomenon quickly abated, the fact that scientists have been unable to make any sense of the Black Dawn thus far - thanks in no small part by the Japanese government's reluctance to release details of the incident - has created growing international pressure for Japan to better contain its own national security issues.

"Of course we wouldn't get credit for that," Tiro mumbled as he took a sip of his own coffee.

"Of course," Asuka deadpanned. "The government's gotten lazy. They'd rather throw things at our feet and then point to us when strange things happen rather than understand the situation themselves. Still, at least they seem to be making some attempt to deal with this problem to prevent panic."

"Well, why don't they give US more money and personnel, then? We're the ones that always take care of things," Tiro griped.

Asuka chose not to point out that Tiro was hardly one to complain about credit being given where it wasn't due; it wasn't due to any effort on his part that the DAPC had muscled through every major obstacle that had been set in its path, yet he got paid all the same.

"It's much easier, and politically expedient, to work toward the full resurrection of Japan's military than it is to pour men and money into a singularly unpopular department," Asuka said simply. "Either way, this is good for us. If Core actually gets enough resources and full strategic support, they can finally sweep the Freedom's Angels from Japan once and for all. That will take a huge burden off of our operations."

_Finance Minister Tana Hikoshi has been an outspoken and valuable supporter of the military spending bills in the legislature ever since the Black Dawn, giving numerous speeches and holding many high-level meetings in order to gather support. He had this to say at a recent government rally:_

"I have seen first-hand the threats that haunt this city! I have seen first-hand the struggle that our fine defenders face in the line of duty! It's time for us to stop taking our security for granted and stand up to our enemies with the full might of this great nation!"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "That the guy Snake and Kyle 'escorted'?"

Tiro nodded. "It's nice to see that he lived through the experience."

_If the various spending bills pass the legislature, spending on the Central Organized Response Echelon will increase by over one thousand percent, and other cities will be granted formal budgets to shift local JSDF forces into their own local defense departments. While many cities already have municipal defense forces that operate in a manner similar to Core, they lack the funding and military expertise given to Tokyo's elite fighting force. In preparation for the bills, however, many municipalities are preparing their own legislature to reorganize and modernize their local forces to Core's standards._

"Glad to hear it," Asuka mumbled, turning away from the TV and casting a final annoyed glance at the sleeping Ranma. "Leaving now. Need coffee."

Half an hour later the police captain was leaning back in her chair, a blissful smile on her face as she clasped the steaming hot mug in her hands.

"Coffee has to be mankind's crowning achievement by far," the bluette mumbled dreamily. "Sliced bread? Electricity? The Internet? Electromagnetic rail guns? Feh."

Just as she was settling into what was arguably the high point of her day, an overly-cheery voice came from the lobby.

"Asuka-chan! Where are you? We're here!"

The police captain grumbled at Usagi's maddening persistence in using "Asuka-chan" as she stepped out of her office. "All right, all right, I'm coming. Hold on..."

Turning out of the hall, Asuka noted that Usagi, Ami, and Minako were all standing over the couch, with the former leaning over the top of the couch and poking Ranma's sleeping form with one of the cybernetic arms that unfolded from her shoulders.

Annoyingly enough, it was the woman who didn't really belong there that spoke first.

"Hi Asuka-chan! Is Snake-senpai on duty yet?" Minako asked brightly.

Asuka's eyebrow twitched at the honorifics. So now Snake was "senpai," was he? And it seemed as if Usagi's penchant for addressing her like one of her girlfriends was rubbing off, too.

"No, he's not. He won't be here for some time, actually," Asuka admitted. Minako promptly deflated.

Ami was about to speak, but to everyone's surprise, the police captain kept going.

"It doesn't need to be said that I fully respect your privacy, and any relationship you have with my Lieutenant is none of my business," she said firmly, her expression stern. "However, if I may, I suggest that you speak to Chikiko if you insist on... **pursuing** him." Asuka had said the word "pursuing" distastefully, as if the idea of someone wanting Snake was atrocious in and of itself.

Minako, however, seemed to brighten considerably at the advice. "That's a good idea! She probably knows the guys best, huh?"

"Maybe," Asuka said, shrugging, "but more importantly, she's a licensed psychiatrist."

Leaving the blonde to twitch irritably, Asuka turned toward her cousin. "Do you have the data from last night's recon?"

Ami nodded immediately. "I haven't spent too much time analyzing what information I've found, nor have I taken a crack at the data Usagi managed to acquire. I'll have to leave it all to you, unfortunately."

"You're not staying to help analyze the information?" Asuka asked, trying hard not to sound disappointed. After all, it wasn't like she paid Ami or anything, so she had no right to consume so much of her time.

"I'd like to stay and help, but I have other work to do," the genius Senshi said vaguely. Not that she was likely at all to make any progress on finding Hotaru, but she wasn't about to explain to Haruka that she didn't have any new information because she had been busy unraveling a terrorist defense network.

"Did you find anything on Hotaru-chan?" Usagi asked immediately, shifting over next to Ami in seconds.

Ami sighed. "No, but I'm still searching. It's just... it seems so HOPELESS sometimes, you know?"

Asuka frowned. "I'm still not completely clear on who this person is that you're searching for. You were talking about her with Hino-san last night, correct?"

"It's a problem that we have to deal with," Ami said, and not for the first time. Asuka had gently expressed her desire to help before, but Ami brushed her concern aside. The DAPC couldn't do anything to help, and if they tried that would just get Haruka worked up. "It's Senshi business."

Even as Asuka shrugged, Usagi sniffled and one of her shoulder-mounted cybernetic arms dabbed at her eyes. "It's so sad! It's been so long since she disappeared now! What if she's trapped or lost in some horrible cavern or something! All alone, helpless, hungry and thirsty! It must be torture!"

* * *

_Dah-duhn duuuhn... Dah-duhn duuhn..._

Hotaru dashed across the cave interior, occasionally reaching an open magma pit and somersaulting over it.

_Dah-duhn duuuhn... Dah-duhn duuhn..._

Standing in place and closing her eyes, Hotaru slowly raised her hand into the air, causing a fairly large rock across the cavern to rise up at the same rate.

_Dah dah dah dah-dah-dah..._

Hotaru gasped as she did push-ups as quickly as possible, sweat beading on her forehead due to the surrounding magma pools.

_Duh duh duhn da-duhn da-duhn!_

"Nal-sensei, I don't really mind constantly switching between dozens of different exercises after doing each one for a few seconds," Hotaru gasped out as she stood on her hands, holding her balance upside-down, "but do you have to play that 'Rocky training montage' music in the background? It's rather annoying."

"It is... necessary," Nal'Shek said vaguely, watching the young woman exercise as he floated above the offending music player.

* * *

"Hey Cap," Snake said suddenly, alerting the various officers and Senshi to his presence as he strolled toward the elevator. "Hey Cap's cousin. Hey Yamazaki. Hey Tsukino. Hey Orange Skirt."

Usagi greeted the American back cheerfully while Minako merely stared at Snake with little hearts in her eyes, either not noticing or not caring that he wasn't addressing her by name.

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing here so early, Lieutenant? Your shift doesn't start until noon today."

"It's my turn to wake up Hino," Snake explained, smiling happily.

"It's still morning," Ami pointed out helpfully.

"I need time to prepare it," he reasoned, "and time to take the measure on the vault doors to check how much kinetic force they can withstand. Wouldn't want to let the bad bloodsucker go."

The blondes blinked cluelessly at the explanation as Ami's eye twitched.

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Forget it Lieutenant. As of last night you're permanently off of vampire feeding duty."

Snake jerked to a stop, stunned. "Wh-What? Why? Why would you do that?" He hesitated for a moment as he actually thought about the question. "Oh... right."

"Furthermore, Hino-san is now formally a member of the DAPC. I expect you to pretend as if that matters to you."

Snake saluted seriously. "Of course, Captain! I would never, EVER bring intentional harm to my subordinates!" He said enthusiastically. Then he coughed and mumbled under his breath, "Unless they're walking abominations against nature, maybe."

"What?" Asked Usagi, blinking.

"I said 'Why is Ranma sleeping here?'" he lied. "Looks kinda pale, too."

"I don't know, actually," Usagi asked, frowning. "He was fine last night; he shouldn't be THIS tired. And he does look kind of... drained..." For some reason that word taunted her, as if she was on the edge of an epiphany, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out what it was.

Seeing that the conversation wasn't going anywhere useful, Asuka decided to steer back on track.

"Tsukino-kun, do you have the data you downloaded last night?"

Usagi pushed her concerns for Ranma aside as she turned toward her superior. "Yup! I managed to get everything from the boss's computer! Even a bunch of secret files!"

Snake tired of the conversation quickly and moved to sit next to Tiro to watch the news. Minako followed as expected.

"Secret files? That sounds good. Have you had any time to peruse them?" The police captain asked.

"No, but-"

Before the blonde cyborg could explain further, the front door to the building was suddenly thrown open with force and fanfare that far exceeded the others' entrances.

Makoto commanded the attention of the entire room and the one adjacent as she stepped into the lobby, her posture as proud as could be. "You guys, you're not going to believe who I found!"

"Setsuna?" guessed Ami.

"Hotaru?" guessed Usagi.

"Tokima?" guessed Asuka.

"Waldo?" guessed Snake.

"It's Waldo, isn't it?" asked Minako, promptly changing her guess.

Makoto gave Snake a dirty look, despite the fact that the American hadn't even turned his eyes away from the television since she had arrived. "No! I finally found my old senpai!"

Asuka turned away from the taller woman at that, having immediately lost interest. The reactions from the rest of the girls were mixed. Usagi looked surprised, Minako looked overjoyed, and Ami rolled her eyes wearily.

"You're kidding! Who is it?" Minako demanded.

Makoto wasn't about to spill everything so quickly however, and pulled a photo out of her pocket before holding it up with the backside facing her friends. "I just spent a few days going through my old pictures on a hunch until I finally found a good one of him. I wasn't really holding out much hope that it was really him, but as amazing as it seems, it was! He's changed so much since I last saw him!"

By this time Minako and Usagi were eyeing the photograph almost frantically, and Usagi unfolded her cybernetic arms out of her shoulders as she started to advance on the poytailed girl in step with the other blonde. Even Ami had to admit that her curiosity was slowly overwhelming her commitment to the more serious issues at hand here.

Makoto grinned as she let Usagi snatch the photo from her fingers with one of the robotic claws. "Take a look!"

The cybernetic arm pulled the photograph closer as the claw rotated, turning the picture around for the three curious Senshi to see.

Silence reigned in the building for several seconds as the three women carefully inspected the photograph.

Finally, Usagi spoke. "Mako-chan... you're a liar."

"Eh?" Makoto blinked, not having expected that. "No, he really is! I'm sure of it!"

"That's not what she meant," Ami deadpanned. "Somehow, despite the sheer statistical improbability of it, NONE of the men you've crushed on over the years look AT ALL like Rayden Shikodan."

The name sent a shock wave through the DAPC, and Asuka flinched in surprise as Tiro sprayed a burst of coffee from his mouth and started coughing. Snake's expression turned completely blank, and even Ranma, who was still asleep, twitched uncomfortably and then turned over.

Makoto frowned, scratching her cheek. "Really? You don't think so?"

"Rayd-are you serious?" Asuka demanded, suddenly sticking her head over Ami's shoulder to look at the photo. It was a picture of a rather burly teenager by a pool looking over his shoulder at the camera. He had a small smile on his face, which at first made it absolutely impossible for Asuka to reconcile the boy with the image of the grim Catholic until her eyes were drawn to the tattoo of "091" on his left shoulder.

Further scrutiny revealed that, save the cautiously happy expression, the individual in the photo really did seem to be a younger Rayden; the face was the same and his body was that of a competition bodybuilder, bulging with muscle.

Tiro was aghast. "He actually had a girlfriend?"

Asuka, for her part, was equally floored. "He can actually SMILE?"

Makoto gave the police officers annoyed looks. "Of course he can. Shiko-chan just gets... moody sometimes."

"From what I've seen, he has exactly two moods," Snake volunteered from where he was still watching TV, "cold and murderous, and frigid and grumpy." Then he shrugged. "Not that I'm criticizing. He's not a bad guy at all. But he IS kind of a cold-blooded killing machine."

Makoto fumed. "No he isn't! You just don't know the REAL Shiko-chan! The one that I knew before his parents died!"

"He's an orphan like you?" Minako asked, still eyeing the picture critically. Personally, she was incredibly disappointed. Rayden was not particularly good-looking at all, and from what she was hearing, had the personality of a lead weight. This was the man Makoto was always pining for?

Makoto nodded sadly at Minako's question. "It was much worse for him, though. His parents were murdered in their home while he was away on a school trip. The house had been looted afterward, so the police thought they had been killed as part of a robbery, but as far as I know the perpetrators were never found."

"Not by the police, maybe," Tiro mumbled, shivering. "Shikodan-san's pretty good at the whole 'vigilante' thing, so I'll bet he's already taken care of things."

"After his parents were killed, he suddenly vanished a few days later, before the funerals were held. I never saw him again until recently," Makoto said softly.

Ami still looked skeptical. "So you didn't recognize him or his name until you matched the tattoo you saw with the one in the picture?"

"Well, this is a bit embarrassing to say, but... I never knew his given name," Makoto said nervously. "He never used or gave it. Nobody did. To most people he was just 'Shikodan' and to the people who weren't too scared of him he was 'Shiko-chan'. He didn't talk about it too much, but whenever somebody brought up his name, he just mumbled something about leaving the past behind and then changed the subject."

"So... why do you like him, again?" Minako asked tactlessly.

The ponytailed girl sighed wistfully. "I know that Shiko-chan was never the most expressive boy or the most handsome, but he was so... reliable and safe. He was one of the most polite and well-meaning people I've ever known, and wouldn't hesitate to stand up to bullies. It's thanks to him that I decided to learn martial arts and stand up for people who couldn't do so for themselves."

The various women remained silent, accepting the reasoning as sound. Even Minako had to admit that there was obviously more to the man than met the eye, and she started to feel a bit guilty that she had been acting so shallow.

Tiro had no such concerns. "You DO know that he's a Russian super-soldier who's been slaughtering heinous criminals for the past five years, right? I think that's important to note."

"Well, I'm a magical girl demon hunter who's been demolishing monsters for just as long, so what's the difference?" Makoto reasoned, crossing her arms over her chest.

"So, are you going to try to get back together with him?" Usagi asked, fighting off a frown. For some reason the thought of the creepy foreign gunman with a girlfriend just seemed so... wrong. She wasn't sure why.

Makoto, for her part, chewed her lip nervously at the question. "Well, I haven't really decided on anything like that," she hedged, scratching the back of her head under her ponytail. "But I do want to get to know him better now that I've found him again."

"Very well!"

Everyone blinked in surprise as Snake suddenly stood up, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Your tale has moved me, Green Skirt! Thus, I've decided that I'll help you in this pursuit of the heart!" The American said dramatically, his face utterly serious as he raised a fist in front of him.

Everybody else save the girl in question was fairly stunned by the admission.

"What do you mean 'help'? What are you going to do?" Makoto asked suspiciously.

"One of the primary obstacles in any relationship with Shikodan is that, as a dangerous, wanted vigilante, he's rather hard to find. I'll flush him out and then bring him here for you, so that at last you can be reunited!" He said firmly, almost shouting.

Snake got more suspicious glances after that. "Why would you do something like that?" Asuka wondered.

The weapons expert snorted. "What kind of man would I be if I just sat around and ignored a young woman's heartfelt plea to be reunited with her lover when I'm in a position to help her? Nobody can ignore a woman in love and call himself a man! Don't take me so lightly!"

Minako's eyes lit up. "So, then-"

"Not now Orange Skirt, I'm busy making dreams come true, here," Snake interrupted, briskly walking past the girls and stepping outside before anything more could be made of his uncharacteristic decision to help.

When the door shut behind Snake, Asuka turned rigidly toward Usagi. "For the sake of plausible deniability, as well as my general psychological well-being, I'm going to pretend that whole conversation never happened."

Ami winced as the other Senshi shared confused glances. "I think she's implying that someone should really stop him."

"If you want. Personally, I have too much trouble reigning him in when he's on duty to worry about whatever messes he makes on his own time," the police captain groused. "But like I said, from this point on that officially never happened. Tsukino!"

Usagi squawked in surprised as she stood rigidly. "Yes?"

"We're going to start analyzing the computer files now. You said you managed to get everything?" Asuka demanded.

"Well, everything on that computer," Usagi clarified. "I even had time to leave something behind!"

Asuka blinked. "Leave something behind? Like what?"

* * *

"From the initial reports, it seems that there was no actual damage to the facility itself, Tokima-sama," Bei Takana said as she followed Alexandra Tokima out into the hall outside the CEO's office.

"No damage at all?" the terrorist leader asked skeptically as she pushed in the keycode to access her office, followed by a quick swipe to have her fingerprint verified.

"Well, actually," Bei winced as the doors slid open, revealing the CEO's office... and the large hole that had been cut out of the window. "There was some... minor, isolated damage..."

Alexandra's face twisted into a scowl. "I see. There was no sign of any break-ins besides my office?"

"That's correct, Tokima-sama. General Yuchtzky believes that HQ was the target of a two-pronged reconnaissance operation. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of infiltration anywhere besides your office, though. It's possible the mission was aborted when the general drove off the... officer."

Alex bit her lip anxiously at Bei's hesitation. It surprised everyone that the DAPC had stooped to using vampires as weapons before the Freedom's Angels could. Of course, there was a chance that the midian Igov fought was just wearing a disguise, perhaps to provoke the two powers most threatening to the vampires into attacking each other, but she very much doubted it. All perceptible signs of vampire activity had ceased after the Black Dawn, and she found it hard to believe that any vampire remnants were more interested in revenge than survival. Pissing off the Freedom's Angels in order to agitate the DAPC was hardly productive if one wanted to avoid oblivion.

No, it was much easier to believe that the infuriatingly effective fools had simply recruited a vampire, much like they had mysteriously acquired that armored alien beast. And it irritated Alex to no end that she was apparently losing an arms race to a bunch of incompetent police officers.

"Have the chronospheres moved immediately. And the T-virus mutagens. They're not safe here any longer. And make sure they're moved during the DAY," the brunette commanded, walking around her desk and scowling at seeing the locks on her desk drawers ripped apart. "This could be very bad. If they got into my files, they could have detailed information on several of our projects, as well as where they're being housed."

Alexandra tapped her desk lightly, and the monitor overhead flickered as the computer started up.

"We may have to organize a massive shift in resources from Wraith properties to those in sector-"

The terrorist general was cut off as the computer finished starting up, presenting her with not a password screen, but rather an image of a young, unfamiliar blonde woman with her hair in twin ponytails and a black bodysuit on.

_Halt, evildoer!_ The image said, suddenly pointing a finger at Alex. _Computers are tools for the betterment of all people, not weapons for your evil schemes! For the act of plotting against the innocent people of Tokyo, you will not be forgiven! I am Cyber Moon! For great justice, I will punish YOU!_

Bei gaped openly at the monitor as the image glared in a manner that was far more cute than intimidating.

Then the image vanished, and was replaced by the normal password entry screen.

Alexandra was silent for several long moments before she finally spoke again. "Bei."

"Y-Yes?" the younger woman asked, straightening.

"These devices connect to a computer tower locked up on the fifth floor, in the far left corner of the mainframe storage center," Alex explain calmly. "Find that computer, take it to the testing fields in the basement levels, and then have it shot."

Bei blinked. "You want me to... execute your computer?"

"An example must be made," the terrorist general said, summoning considerable dignity around her for what could only be described as a silly task, "so that everyone knows that we do not tolerate **betrayal**." Then she frowned. "Or... whatever this is, exactly."

"Uh... right. Right away, Tokima-sama."

* * *

Androids scrapped: 2  
Crows crushed: 6  
Machines dispatched via firing squad: 1  
Victories using Slayer: 9 out of 22  
Missions complete: 1  
Moon cats ignored: 2

End Chapter 12 


	13. Ghosts of Plot Lines Past

"An unjust peace is better than a just war."  
Cicero

"Speaking as a person of Jewish lineage, I respectfully disagree."  
Ken "Snake" Yakata

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.  
Other note: Because people would NOT SHUT UP about me leaving Hotaru alone for a little while, this installment will mostly focus on her. Are you happy now?  
Other Notes: _Sounds_, **computer readouts**, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 13  
Ghosts of Plot Lines Past  
********************************************************************

Hotaru squeezed her eyes shut tight as she sat with her legs crossed on the floor, a small vein of magma pouring down a section of the wall and into a spout in the floor to provide the room with heat and light.

As difficult as she found some of the physical feats demanded by her training, the meditations were by far the worst part of Nal'Shek's regimen.

Not because they were particularly taxing or unpleasant, but just because she personally found it impossible.

She had no idea why, but every time she performed any of the exercises the ancient Sith spirit proposed, rather than her mind clearing and becoming at ease, her mind became hectic and panicked instead.

Images that she recalled from the back of her mind came to the fore, demanding urgency. Pictures in her head of Sailor Moon, Haruka, Michiru, and even Ranma would surface, becoming sharper and more distinct the more she tried to focus her mind. And even deeper were less coherent images that threatened to bubble to the surface the moment she was without distraction: scorched worlds, continents shattering apart, ramparts crumbling, and the Giants winning the world series all teased her with momentary glimpses and shaky silhouettes stamped onto the back of her consciousness.

The ideas were even harder to deal with. Bizarre, dark thoughts fluttered about in her head as fast as she could banish them. She could feel it happening even now, actually. As she let go of the haze of perception that occupied her mind and released that crucial tether to the world around her, voices began to speak; some of them hers, some of them belonging to others important to her, and a precious few that were strange, unfamiliar, and desperately frightening.

She got the distinct feeling, when she dipped a metaphorical toe into that startling realm where she was supposed to feel nothing, that she didn't belong where she was. Not in the greater sense, as if she didn't belong on Earth, but rather that she didn't belong with the ancient Sith spirit, that she had important duties she was neglecting, and that the art she was being taught was... wrong. How or why it was wrong was impossible to say; such ideas were drowned in hysteria and fear that were only partially her own.

Those voices weren't so bad. As panicked and frantic as they felt, such ideas seemed grounded in reason and sense, albeit reason and sense that somehow escaped her waking mind.

It was the other thoughts, the other... things... that spoke to her that confused and terrified her. To clear her mind in meditation and bring herself closer to the Force, the power that Nal'Shek sought to teach her was less like immersing oneself in a calm pond - as her undead mentor described it - and more akin to being tossed into a stormy ocean. The sheer amount of power that surrounded and pressed her mind to its limits were almost more than she could bear.

But that was hardly the worst part. Trying to personally control a power far beyond any human's wildest comprehension was nothing new to Hotaru Tomoe.

No. The worst part was... there were sharks in that stormy ocean.

Predators that almost seemed to be of the Force itself, malevolent and intelligent beasts that sought her out within the vast sea of pure energy and boiling thought.

Some merely attacked viciously, startling her out of her meditations as if she had awoken from a nightmare. Others stalked her endlessly, their presence constantly on the edge of her stunted and unfamiliar senses. And some... spoke to her. They talked about things, sometimes as if seeking conversation, and other times as if they were trying to bully or tempt her. Hateful curses mixed with alluring promises swam desperately among the noise of her mental "calm", the particular words always fading away if she ever tried to recall them or formulate a reply. If she could formulate a reply. Nal'Shek's instruction on meditating a connection with the Force had made no mention of what to do about strange voices in your head.

She hated the voices. She hated them almost as much as they seemed to hate her. Always following her and interrupting her meditations and sending the occasional image of her maggot-bloated corpse laying atop a pile of festering bodies. It was almost enough to make her want to scream! No, it was much worse than that. It made her want to take their puny, insubstantial non-bodies and-

_Sssssrrrreek!_ The sound of tearing metal brought her consciousness crashing back to Earth, and Hotaru gasped as she fell flat onto her back, sweat covering her entire body.

"Control! Control! You must learn control!" chided Nal'Shek from where the Force ghost overlooked his pupil.

As Hotaru panted for breath, her eyes were drawn across the room toward one of the many metal supports that spanned the height of the cavern. The beam had been twisted like a plastic straw, the middle of it pinched and then bent into a corkscrew shape.

"Did... Did I do that?" Hotaru asked between heavy breaths, her eyes wide.

"Oh, yes. A shame you didn't do it on purpose," the ancient spirit mused, his eyes glowing faintly as he floated over next to the twisted metals. "Remember this, pupil: the Force is a powerful force when controlled, a power beyond any other that heightens one's senses and body and can turn the merest gesture into a lethal attack," Nal'Shek warned, "but it is not truly your ally. The Force... thinks... yet it is not comprehensible to us. It can be controlled, but it also seeks to control us. If your grip on your power slackens..." the ghost's eyes dimmed uncertainly. "At best, you may lose your concentration. At worst, you would be torn asunder by your own power."

Hotaru digested that information as she scrubbed the sweat out of her eyes. "Well... that still makes it way less dangerous than my LAST barely controllable power. Tearing myself apart is bad, but not as bad as destroying an entire planet."

The Sith snorted disdainfully. "The ability to destroy a planet is INSIGNIFICANT compared to the power of the Force."

Hotaru blinked in surprise, taken aback as she stared up at the ancient spirit. "Really?"

"No, not really. That's just something we say," Nal'Shek admitted, shrugging his insubstantial shoulders. "I mean, don't get me wrong, the Force is great, but destroying planets is significant by any scale."

After a few moments of awkward silence, the spirit moved closer to his charge, a bemused expression on his shimmering face. "Hotaru, you seem... troubled. It concerns me that the meditations are so difficult for you."

The young apprentice scowled uncharacteristically as she lowered her head. "It's those... those THINGS! Whenever I go into deep meditation, they're always there, just... waiting for me." She shuddered weakly. "You're sure you don't know anything about them?"

Nal'Shek was silent, his empty, soft blue eyes staring at the girl below him. "It's... hard to say. The Force is the source of our power, the center of our existence, and yet we know so little about it. I can say with some certainty that the Force seemed... troubled is the word I would have to use... long ago before I died, when I first came to this edge of the galaxy. As I said, my ability to perceive and affect that plane of being is diminished so long as I remain in this state. That's the most likely reason that I've never sensed anything like you've described."

Hotaru blinked repeatedly.

"The Force is alive, yet not living. It has no will, and yet sometimes appears to act or make decisions. What you encountered could have been other Force-sensitive individuals or even beasts scrying that particular realm of thought, deep in their own meditations, or it could have been something... more."

Hotaru waited for the specter to trail off, and then spoke curiously. "You said... 'so long as I remain in this state'? You mean you can come back to life?"

Nal'Shek almost seemed to jump at the question, startled. "What? No, no. I cannot come back to life."

He shook his head. "The relationship between the Force and the flesh is tenuous and uncertain. Even with all my power, constructing a human body, with all its complexities and biological wonders, is a job for the more precise, deliberate realm of science, not the arcane rituals of the Sith."

The former Senshi of Saturn nodded slowly, wondering to herself if he was truly implying that the science of his home world could have created a human body from scratch.

"But back to our previous topic," the ghostly master said, lowering himself fully to the floor. "In order to deal with these... 'Force predators', I'll need to observe them for myself."

Hotaru cocked her head to one side. "But you just said that you couldn't."

"That's correct. But YOU can, obviously," Nal'Shek drawled, his translucent lips quirking into a smile. "I'm going to attempt to become one with you, Hotaru. For the extent of our union, I will be able to perceive the Force as it affects and flow through you."

The purple-haired girl jerked back. "Wh-What? You're going to... what?"

The phantom Sith sighed, having somewhat expected her to be revolted by the prospect of possession. "I'll simply be entering you for a short period of time-"

"W-Will I still be a virgin afterward?" Hotaru asked nervously, shrinking back.

It wasn't exactly possible for a ghost to facefault, but Nal'Shek made a good show of trying, plummeting straight into the rocky ground and vanishing from sight.

After a few seconds, he floated up once more, his insubstantial eyebrow twitching in annoyance.

"I can reassure you, the process is not sexual in any way, and you should feel foolish for suggesting such a thing," he snapped.

"Well, I don't think it's all that unreasonable," Hotaru said defensively as she sat up straight again. "I mean, you've been trapped in here for so long, all by yourself, and then randomly some young, helpless girl teleports in-"

"Stop talking, please," Nal'Shek requested, his eyes glowing more brightly as a translucent vein popped up over his head. "I don't have a body substantial enough to smack you upside the head for your foolishness, much less ravish you. This is simply the best method available in order to overcome your difficulties with the meditations and verify the existence of these... 'Force beasts'."

Hotaru nodded silently. "All right, if it will help me proceed... what do I have to do?"

"First, close your eyes while I touch you."

Hotaru whimpered.

"Oh, get over it," the Force ghost snapped as he approached, his hand reaching for the girl's forehead as she nervously shut her eyes.

* * *

"Hello everyone!" Usagi said happily as she passed through the front doors of the DAPC headquarters. Suspended behind her via a small crane-like attachment coming out of her shoulder was a stack of pink pastry boxes that represented the departments' usual breakfast. "I brought doughnuts!" Makoto walked in silently behind her, already slowly munching on a cinnamon roll.

Asuka glanced up from her coffee and nodded before her eyes returned to the data sheets on her computer screen.

The other officers were generally more enthusiastic about the appearance of doughnuts, and Tiro, Snake, and Kyle all rushed to claim their share as Junko lazed about on the couch on her own.

After several seconds the pastries had been unharnessed and were being messily devoured by the four police officers among cheerful small talk and moans of satisfaction.

Suddenly, Asuka frowned and once again looked up at her cybernetic subordinate. "Tsukino-san, where's Saotome? He didn't come in with you?"

Usagi blinked and quickly gulped down a chocolate-frosted bear claw, leaving a thick brown smudge all around her mouth. "Ranma-kun? He left for work a long time ago. You mean he hasn't arrived yet?"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "He came in early? Why would he do that?"

Before Usagi could explain that she didn't know or offer any useless guesses, the elevator to the sub-levels suddenly beeped, indicating that someone had used it to ascend to the main floor.

As it so happened, once the heavy steel doors slid open, Ranma promptly staggered out of the elevator, his eyes swirling as he swayed back and forth. Even more odd than his state of disorientation was that he had a thick ring of padding around his neck, as if he had suffered a recent injury.

"Saotome? Where did you come from?" Asuka asked, turning around in her seat.

Ranma immediately locked on to the scent of food and made a bee-line for the doughnuts, his stride only wobbling twice before he seized a maple bar and stuffed half of it down his throat. After a few seconds of chewing and swallowing, he finally turned slightly to address the police captain. "I was downstairs. Doing... uh... recon, I guess."

"Why would you be on recon in our own HQ?" Tiro asked, showing unusual initiative in pointing out logical fallacies.

"Uh..." Ranma said nothing for several seconds, and then quickly ate another doughnut, using the time to think up a response. "You know," he mumbled around a mouthful of fried bread and sugar, "Rei-chan saw that weird thing the other night, so I'm still looking for it every once in a while."

Asuka's eyes narrowed. "Why do you have a neck brace on?"

Ranma gulped, knowing that this was the more important lie but at least having thought about it ahead of time. "Whiplash. It's from whiplash."

"How'd YOU get whiplash?" Tiro asked incredulously. "I've seen you get flung through car windshields at a hundred kilometers an hour and STILL land on your feet!"

Kyle sighed wistfully. "I kinda miss Tycho."

"Yeah... well..." Ranma stammered, wondering why everyone was giving his injuries so much attention all of a sudden. Nobody seemed to care this much whenever Snake blew him up! "It's just that... uhm... hey, it's Mako-chan! What's she doing here?"

Tiro, Kyle, and Usagi, being three of the more simple-minded officers present, immediately turned around in surprise (despite the fact that Makoto had apparently followed Usagi to the station in the first place).

"That's a good question, actually," Asuka said, her eyes lingering on Ranma's desperate expression before she looked over to the taller woman. "Don't the rest of you Senshi have classes or superhero patrols or something?"

The pony tailed girl frowned under all the sudden attention. "I'm only here because Snake told me he had something for me."

With the center of attention once again deflected, all eyes shifted to Snake, who was sipping some coffee nonchalantly.

"Well?" Makoto asked, crossing her arms under her breasts.

"Wait for it..." Snake mumbled before picking up another glazed doughnut.

"Wait for wha-"

_WHAM!_ The walls shook slightly as the front doors were thrown open, and one of them shuddered badly before the hinge broke from the sheer force that it had been straining against.

Rayden Shikodan stood in the now-open doorway, his massive frame eclipsing most of the light from outside. Judgment was in his left hand, wrapped in rags as usual, while his other hand was gripped tightly into a fist.

Although the crusader sported his usual unreadable, grim expression, there were a few clues that indicated that he was in fact highly enraged. His fist seemed to shake and writhe restlessly, as if he was discouraged that he couldn't clench it tight enough, and the heavy rise and fall of his breath was big enough that judgment shifted constantly against his shoulder.

_Crack! Thud!_ There was also the front door, which had lost its second hinge and collapsed onto the floor.

"Shiko-ch-" Makoto began to say brightly, only to stop as the Russian rushed past her and most of the other officers before halting in front of Snake, who slowly stared up at the expressionless gunman as he chewed his pastry.

"Wassup Frowny?" the American asked before picking up one of the pink boxes and holding them up to the super-soldier. "Doughnut?"

A contemptuous backhand send the box flying across the room as Rayden's eyes narrowed.

"Hey!" Usagi shouted as her arm snapped out faster than the human eye could follow, a long coruscating tendril of whitish energy striking the doughnut box and stopping it in place in the air. At the same time, a bluish blur streaked in front of pastries that had been flung out of the box and intercepted each one.

"That was totally uncalled for!" Usagi scolded, reeling the doughnut box in with her tractor beam.

Ranma stepped up next to Kyle holding a dozen doughnuts in his arms and generally looking far less exhausted than he was before.

"You know, what with you always zipping around like that at high speed, it's no wonder you have whiplash," the blond man said, nodding to himself.

Ranma frowned as he set the doughnuts down onto the coffee table. "So... are you the only one that believed that story, then?"

Kyle nodded immediately. "Yeah, I think so. Have you seen a chiropractor? Oh, maybe Seras-san could help!"

Ranma sighed as he rubbed the neck brace, feeling the lingering pain of the wound in his neck. "Can we please stop talking about this and focus on why Ray looks like he's about to grind Snake to a pulp?"

"I can tell you're upset about something..." Snake murmured as he kept his eyes locked with the towering vigilante. "Is there perhaps some way I can help you?"

With a cold, detached stare that was his trademark, the Russian finally spoke. "My home was destroyed today while I was attending a church service."

Usagi and Makoto promptly gasped, horrified that such a sudden thing had happened to him. The more experienced DAPC officers immediately pieced together what had happened and shook their heads wearily.

"Oh, wow. That sucks, dude," Snake said in an obviously rehearsed response. "I'll bet you didn't see who did it either, since your strict adherence to Catholicism makes it easy to predict exactly when you'll be at church and out of your apartment."

Rayden's eyes narrowed. "You are correct. However, as I was searching the torched interior of my home for anything useful that may have survived, the landlord found me and said that you had been by earlier today with an offer to let me stay at the headquarters if anything unfortunate happened to my abode."

Snake brightened. "Now that you mention it, I DID say that, didn't I? Well, I guess this all works out just fine then! We'll have Yamazaki show you around and-"

_Clack!_ Snake stopped talking as a pump-action shotgun was leveled at his forehead.

"I demand to know why you did this," Rayden said, his voice like bubbling magma under a sheet of ice, "I have assisted you as you've requested and abided by your department's decisions and rulings time and time again, often to my detriment, and yet this is how I am rewarded?"

Snake was silent for a moment as he stared down the barrel of the gun in his face. Then he turned toward Asuka. "Why is it that people treat my acts of good will and generosity as evidence of guilt?"

Asuka sweatdropped. "Taking that question at face value, I would have to say that you're so unfamiliar with acts of good will and generosity that you literally just don't know how to go about them without also revealing that you're the one who TORCHED HIS GODDAMN APARTMENT."

Snake frowned as the captain's words sunk in. "So, is this an etiquette issue, or-"

The American was cut off as Rayden grabbed him by his collar, hauling him into the air. "I demand an explanation, lunatic." The shotgun from earlier clattered to the floor, thankfully unused.

"Whoa, whoa, ease up there," Ranma said suddenly, appearing behind the vigilante and resting a hand on his arm. "I know how you feel, but this is just Snake being Snake. He does this sort of thing sometimes. Or all the time. Anyway, it's not worth killing him over."

Rayden was still as he processed Ranma's logic, the icy rage within him slowly subsiding. "May I injure him severely, then?"

"Not while he's on duty," Asuka deadpanned. "I need him up and mobile so that he can fight on a moment's notice."

Snake promptly stuck out his tongue at the Russian and pulled down an eyelid.

Before Rayden could dwell on exactly how immoral it would be to murder the American policeman where he stood, a small but firm hand took him by the shoulder and squeezed it gently, demanding attention.

A listless glance behind him revealed the pony tailed brunette, her expression one of hope and determination.

"So... does this mean that you're staying here from now on?" Makoto asked. "Or are you going to try and find a place on your own?"

A heaving sigh came from the gunman before he dropped Snake back to the floor and then turned to face her. "It is best that I not remain here. I can-"

"Before I forget," Snake interrupted, taking a moment to re-adjust his collar, "I accidentally updated your police record with a few fresh murders after the vampire hunt debriefing. I'm pretty sure every single police officer outside the DA's jurisdiction has been ordered to shoot you on sight. Again."

Snake quickly gulped down the rest of his coffee as the others in the room gaped, and then he saluted as he tossed the empty cup away. "Well, I got patrol now! Ta ta!"

As the American rushed out the front door, Ranma grabbed Rayden's arm as it started to move toward the fold of his trench coat and the veritable armory that laid within. "No! Stop that!"

"Who would miss him?" the Russian grumbled, his face an iron mask even as his eyes promised death.

"Mina-chan would!" Usagi piped up, her voice entirely too cheerful considering they were discussing murder.

"I will send her my regrets," Rayden said darkly.

"NO, you won't. Calm down!" Ranma demanded. "We can get you set up here, I'm sure!"

"Yeah, fine, why not?" Asuka grumbled as she began typing away at her computer, "we already have vampires nesting in the bowels of our headquarters, and I was just thinking there wasn't enough violent tension around here. Let's give the sub-human religious fanatic a room. Do you want a reinforced vault door that can't be opened from the inside or an open room with lots of crates full of unknown and possibly dangerous materials?"

Rayden actually stopped to consider the question for a moment. "The vault. I don't want my work or meditations interrupted by the corrupt detritus that no doubt lurks below this place."

"Prison vault it is. Also, I'd like you to punch Snake in the gut for me after his shift for making me do this," Asuka mumbled bitterly.

"Amen," Rayden said solemnly before Makoto shook his shoulder again. "Yes? What do you wish of me?"

"I... I was hoping we could talk," the pony tailed girl said awkwardly, not knowing exactly how to broach the topic of their shared childhood in front of the police officers. "Would you like to go somewhere? Like, get some coffee, or maybe breakfast or-"

"Let us find a chapel," Rayden decided glumly, bowing his head. "There are things I must think on, and I will find no peace in this place." Without waiting to hear Makoto's response, he turned around and stalked toward the exit, Judgment still balanced over his shoulder.

"Okay, that's fine! Let's go to a chapel!" the brunette said happily, following the giant of a man out the door in anticipation of her reunion with her long-lost boyfriend.

"Tsukino, tell me: is it really SO hard to find good men nowadays that perfectly attractive young college girls have to start snapping up the murderous psychotics?" Asuka deadpanned, watching Rayden and Makoto leave the station with an expression of great disgust on her features.

Usagi frowned as she considered the question seriously, tapping a finger against her lip. "I'm not sure... but that reminds me; Mamo-chan and I still haven't made up yet. I haven't even SEEN him since that thing with the vampires."

"I don't know who that is, but as it seems we already have plenty of relationship drama floating around here, save me five minutes and a headache by not explaining," Asuka said coldly before snapping her attention to Ranma. "Saotome, I feel like some hand-to-hand training. You up to that?"

"Bwuh?" Ranma took a few seconds to process the request, and then shook his head to clear it. "Oh! Training. Sure. Okay."

Asuka watched the pigtailed man carefully, obviously concerned by his sluggishness. Nonetheless she walked off to the HQ gym with Ranma following sleepily.

The other officers watched them go, and after a few seconds Junko smirked and followed the pair.

"Well, with them gone, I'm pretty sure that leaves me in command!" Tiro said victoriously, pounding a fist against his chest as his other hand grabbed a doughnut from the pastry box that was still floating in the air, attached to Usagi's wrist by the tendril of unknown energy.

"How? I outrank you!" Kyle complained, pointing to the rank badge on his uniform jacket.

Tiro promptly snatched the badge away and affixed it to his own jacket.

"Awww..." Kyle wilted at having been defeated in a contest of logic - as usual - and Usagi patted him on the back sympathetically with her free hand.

"And now, my knuckle headed, nigh-indestructible comrades, we go on patrol!" the lecher said enthusiastically, pointing to the door.

Then Tiro spun back around to face Usagi, his eyes scanning the humming beam of white light that still held the doughnuts aloft in the air. "By the way, I didn't know you had a tractor beam."

Usagi blinked, confusion dominating her features. "I have a tractor what?"

* * *

Rayden had calmed considerably by the time he and Makoto had reached the nearest Catholic church, his earlier rage a distant, smoldering ember in the back of his mind as he glanced about the interior of the house of worship. The chapel was empty this time of day, although he guessed that there was probably a priest somewhere around the property to act as confessor. Thanks to Ranma's restraining him earlier, however, he had nothing to confess to, and so the Russian set down his concealed weapon before seating himself on one of the pews.

Makoto sat down next to him, obviously uncomfortable. They had not talked at all while traveling through the streets, as Rayden had moved surprisingly swiftly and she had been searching the streets nervously for police officers that might have seen him. Now that they had entered the church, however, the silence seemed to be a tangible thing, pressing down on her and preventing her from starting any of the dozens of conversations she had considered having with her long-lost friend.

Surprisingly, she didn't need to say a thing.

"It has been a long time, Kino-san. I had assumed when we met before that you didn't recognize me," Rayden said, his head lowered in reverence to the wooden statue of Christ at the head of the chapel.

Makoto started, her heart racing immediately. "Oh! Uh... well... I guess I didn't... technically..." she floundered weakly for a few seconds before she realized something. "Wait a minute! You recognized me from the start? Why didn't you say anything?"

"There was little to say at the time, as we were to head into battle. We had our duties, and I did not expect to live past that blasphemous hour," the Russian said grimly. "In any encounter of particular difficulty, I consign my soul to the Lord in preparation. I have little time for mere pleasantries."

"It was a terrible battle, wasn't it?" Makoto said softly, slumping the pew as the images returned to her. "So many... things... we had to destroy. And every one of them used to be human. And then... and then Mars was-"

"The midian is a subject I do not wish to dwell on," Rayden intoned, the slightest hint of a growl in his voice. "I consider her continued existence a personal penance, her twisted body an unliving reminder of my many failures in these past years as a paladin of the faith and enforcer of..."

The gunman trailed off as Makoto started chuckling to herself, and he fell silent.

"I'm sorry," she said between stifled giggles, "but somehow it just seems so like you to wax melodramatic about something like that. We were all so scared that we were going to have to destroy Rei-chan, and we were all so relieved when Ran died and she came back to us. I guess we've all been trying our best to pretend like nothing's really changed since then."

Rayden grunted, obviously displeased that they were dwelling on Rei's fate when he had specifically asked the opposite. "It is foolish to be so complacent. She is one of the accursed dead, and she holds together the shattered fragments of her humanity by sheer strength of will. There is no assurance that she will not falter."

"Oh, you!" Makoto said playfully as she lightly punched the Russian in the shoulder, seemingly cheered by the extraordinarily morbid speech. "You always look for the worst in people, don't you?"

Rayden finally turned to look at the brunette. "She is a vampire, a creature of darkness who feeds on the blood of humans. It is you who insists on never looking beyond her past existence as a human." His voice clearly expressed confusion where his face refused to betray his emotions.

"Hm. And what about Usagi-chan?" Makoto asked, her expression a lazy smirk as she pulled her elbows up onto the back rest of the pews.

Rayden didn't even hesitate. "She is a cruel abomination, a twisted mockery of the human form," he said with a note of sympathy in his voice. "Although she serves no apparent evil, she has had her humanity, that perfection of body and spirit granted to her by our creator, wrenched apart and replaced by cold steel and soulless circuits. How she can endure her own form is a mystery."

Makoto snorted and was about to speak when Rayden continued, apparently not done.

"Her fate saddens me greatly, as it is one that I bear as well. Having one's body altered by the imperfect hands and sciences of mortals in order to perpetrate sin on behalf of another is a terrible existence," the Russian spat, his head lowering.

As Makoto's amusement ceased, he suddenly straightened. "I didn't... ah... forgive me. It is not like me to speak so openly or at length."

"No, no! It's okay! We're old friends, aren't we?" Makoto said, gently squeezing the man's shoulder.

"In times long past, yes," the gunman said bitterly. "However, I have forsaken all on the altar of bloody revenge, Kino-san. My only companion and ally is the Lord, for the dark path I walk I must walk alone with only His light to guide me."

"There you go again with the bad poetry," the brunette said, rolling her eyes. "You're not alone, Shiko-chan. You have me and the DAPC!"

The Russian shook his head as he clasped his hands in prayer. "I do not have you, Kino-san. The man you once knew is long dead, having fallen with his adoptive parents. What you see before you is a shell forged by cruel, hateful sinners and men of war; a body suited only for the black art of murder."

There was a brief pause, and Makoto was surprised to see Rayden's eye twitch in a rare display of visual expression. "Also, the less said about the DAPC the better. I fear my Lord and Savior would not forgive me for the fates I wish upon the American."

"Amen to that," Makoto groused, momentarily forgetting herself as a dark cloud passed over her features. "Bastard actually trapped me in rubble on purpose! Just because he wanted a challenge!"

"To destroy my home merely to summon me, and then attempt to restrict my movements using his access to the authorities," Rayden seethed, his voice full of icy rage, "it rankles that his corruption is tolerated so. The man's only redeeming quality is his skill in war, and oft times I wonder if he has truly committed it to the cause of justice."

"There's no wondering about it," Makoto snapped, crossing her arms under her breasts as she fumed, "the only cause that sick bastard is interested in is violence, and I'm sick of having to put up with it, no matter what Mina and Usagi-chan say!"

As the pair took turns venting their frustrations, a priest slowly crept out the front door, his entrance completely unnoticed. He had been on his way to greet the two and welcome them, but after hearing them rant for a few seconds, had decided not to interrupt their conversation, considering that the pair almost seemed to be... bonding.

'Love may build families and bring us closer to the Lord, but nothing brings people together like hatred,' the priest thought to himself, shrugging as he slipped out. 'I think I'll leave those two alone.'

* * *

Asuka's breathing came heavily as she hopped left and right, her arms held at loose angles at her sides as she bounced around the perimeter of Ranma's reach, searching for one of the openings that he sometimes left in order to goad her into attacking.

Soon she found one, and dove into her instructor's defenses in a tight arc, spinning her entire body to put as much power and speed into a right hook.

Ranma's body flowed away from the attack like water, and the pigtailed man's back bent in order to avoid the swift roundhouse that followed it, allowing the captain's boot to scythe through the air barely a centimeter past his nose.

Once on the offensive Asuka didn't let go of her momentum, giving only the slightest attention to her defense as she launched strike after strike at Ranma seemingly untouchable form.

It wasn't a tactic that he particularly approved of, or one that found much purchase in Anything-Goes; his school of martial arts dictated a fine balance of offense and defense to best adjust for the often painful learning curve in learning of an opponent's strengths and keep enough strength in reserve to make the final push to victory.

Asuka's hand-to-hand training, by necessity, was of a much more pragmatic and grim nature. Her objective was always to either put down her opponent as fast as possible to eliminate the threat or live long enough for someone else to do it for her. It was one of the necessities of relatively normal human beings being trained to fight the horrific enemies that the DAPC often faced, and it was easy enough for Ranma to adjust the regimen.

Ranma snapped to attention once he noted that he had been cornered against the wall of the training room, his mind having wandered while he was analyzing Asuka's efforts. A slight backward hop sent him up against the padded wall of the room, and a careful kick had him somersaulting over his captain's head.

"Hyah!" Asuka had apparently predicted the move, and Ranma was honestly surprised as he quickly batted away the leg sweep that had been timed to strike at the precise moment of touchdown, preventing even him from possibly dodging away.

After knocking away her leg, Ranma caught Asuka's elbow in his palm and then slammed his free hand into her collarbone, staggering the woman and throwing off her assault.

Ranma let out a long breath as he stood up and stretched his back, finding himself worn out even after the relatively short workout.

"Don't tell me you're tired already?" Asuka asked as she stood up and once again moved into a fighting stance. "Is there something you'd like to tell me about, Saotome?"

"Nope, there sure isn't," Ranma said with full honesty, and he tried to shorten his breaths to hide his exhaustion. "Although I gotta say, you've improved a lot."

While Asuka lacked the raw physical prowess of a true martial artist - or rather, what counted as a "true martial artist" in Ranma's eyes - the police captain possessed an awareness of the battlefield and a mind for combat that neatly approximated Ranma's vaunted sixth sense. Even in the flurry of a combat that moved too fast for her eyes to track or her muscles to react to, her mind worked furiously to make up the difference, timing her attacks with precise estimations of where the enemy would be.

It was a considerable talent, although Ranma had to admit that it was of limited use against an opponent that totally outmatched her physically, as many of their enemies did. He supposed that was where her weapons and subordinates came in.

"Your attack strength is still a little on the weak side. You should spend more time muscle training," Ranma said, seeing that Asuka was still scrutinizing him silently, her gaze locked on the padded ring around his neck.

Eventually, the police captain shrugged. "I need speed more than strength to land a knife blow, and you know I hate fighting unarmed in the first place. But I'll keep that in mind." She brought up a much tighter defense. "Why don't you go on the attack for a bit?"

Ranma's stance shifted slightly, and Asuka slowly moved sideways on the balls of her feet, trying to get out from between her instructor and the wall. The pigtailed man approached fluidly and then backed away, slipping in and out of the bluette's guard to provoke her into attacking.

"Yeesh, you could cut the tension in here with a knife," said a new voice.

Ranma and Asuka's stances faltered, both of them feeling the rather oppressive mood slip away as Junko sauntered into the room.

"Can I help you, Chikiko? Or are you actually here for combat training?" Asuka asked, hands on her hips. It would be nice if the redhead actually did practice, as she actually had considerable natural talent for close combat that usually rested under a thick layer of cowardice, but she very much doubted it.

"No, nothing like that," Junko said as she walked up to a confused Ranma and clapped her hands onto his shoulders. "Ranma-kun, it's time."

Ranma's brow furrowed. "Time? Time for what?" He asked.

"Time for you to make a move on the metal hottie you've had sequestered in your house, silly!" Junko said, winking as she massaged the man's shoulders.

"What? Why?" Ranma asked, one eyebrow raised.

"I've been watching you two a long time, and it looks to me like the Girl of Steel is ready to become the Woman of Steel," Junko said as she circled the martial artist, wagging her finger while she lectured. "She's integrated nicely into the department, expanded her circle of acquaintances, come to terms with what she is, and most importantly, I detected a distinct note of disenchantment when she mentioned her previous boyfriend. The iron is hot, and the time to strike is now!"

Asuka rubbed her head as she leaned against the wall. "Did you really have to interrupt our training for this?"

Ranma winced. "Look... it's not that I don't like Usagi-chan, but we're not really-"

"Tut tut! This isn't about you!" Junko said, surprising the pigtailed man. "Usagi-chan is a part of the team, and I believe - as a psychiatrist - that it is in the best interest of her personal development, mental health, and the dynamics of our forces for you to bang her cybernetic brain out."

"That doesn't sound like a part of any psychology lesson I've ever heard of," Asuka deadpanned.

Ranma was thinking about the redhead's proposal, although he was clearly uncomfortable about the topic. "I just don't think it's a good idea to... well..." he looked away and scratched the back of his head. "Why me, anyway?" He didn't really like the idea of any of the other male officers of the DAPC putting the moves on his housemate, but Ranma didn't understand why such a bizarre obligation should fall to him by default.

"Why you? What a silly question," Junko tsked. "Usagi-chan is a very social person, and devours affection as fast as she devours doughnuts. If she's going to make a deep, intimate, and hopefully very sexy bond with one of our fine officers, it's obviously best that she does so with you so that she doesn't end up making a huge mistake and latching on to the wrong sort of person. To say nothing of whether anyone else would have the physical fortitude to try sexing up a cyborg."

Asuka winced. "That actually makes something approaching sense, although I still resent your attempts to hook up your fellow officers."

Junko rolled her eyes. "You didn't resent it back when I was trying to get YOU laid."

The police captain blinked, stunned. "Wait... me? What are you-"

"You know, maybe there's something to what you're saying, Junko-chan!" Ranma said loudly, suddenly seizing the redhead by the arm and pulling her toward the exit. "Let's talk about this in private, okay?"

"What did you mean you were trying to get me laid?" Asuka demanded, moving toward Junko as he furrowed.

Junko smiled as Ranma practically carried her out of the room, once again marveling at how easy it was to emotionally manipulate her fellow officers. "Maybe later, Captain! Sorry to interrupt your training!"

Before long they had located an empty room and Ranma quickly pushed Junko inside, making sure to close the door behind them. "What the hell were you thinking? Don't bring that up in front of the captain!"

"Ranma-kun, really, you both need to chill out. We're all adults here; we should be able to talk about little things like steamy office romance without freaking out," Junko chastised, dropping into a chair in the corner of the room.

"You know damn well that the captain is the only one of us who's that mature," Ranma said, glaring at the redhead, "and even then, she still doesn't like to talk about that sort of thing."

"Tell me about it; Usagi-chan's definitely not the only one who needs to get some," Junko murmured. "But enough about that. I'm quite serious when I say that I think you and Usagi doing the deed can only bring good things."

Ranma's eyes narrowed. "What about her boyfriend?"

"Okay, fine, mostly good things and possibly, MAYBE, minor retribution from a legitimately aggrieved third party," Junko allowed. "Although if that weirdo in the top hat really was her man, it's no wonder she's still a virgin after all this time. If he were any more of a fruit, he could cure scurvy."

Ranma shook her head. "I just have a really bad feeling about this whole idea. There's no way this could end well."

"And how do you figure that?" Junko demanded, crossing her arms under her breasts as she looked up at the martial artist. "She's a lovely young woman with enough ordnance to level a city waiting for her prince on a white horse and as needy as they come. You're an invincible fighter with an insatiable ego and a massive hero complex. You both like each other, live together, support each other, and from what I hear you've already seen her naked. Is it really that hard to contemplate hooking up with her?"

Ranma covered his eyes with a hand as he rubbed his forehead, searching for something to say. He had a vague sense that this whole concept was wrong; the scraps of romanticism within him that occasionally surfaced when it was properly dramatic protested that any relationship he had with Usagi should have come about from their respective feelings developing and surfacing at the right time and place, not from Junko's logical breakdown of Usagi's psyche.

"Can't we just, you know... be good friends? Like you and me?" Ranma asked, obviously frustrated.

Junko raised an eyebrow. "We've slept together."

"That was different!"

The redhead put her hands on Ranma's shoulders. "But it doesn't HAVE to be."

Ranma opened his mouth to refute her logic, but after several seconds of silence, realized that he couldn't find any logic to refute. "Huh?"

"I think we've reached the point in the conversation where you give up and do whatever I say just so you don't have to argue anymore," Junko said, nodding.

"Dammit, already?" Ranma mumbled as he rubbed the back of his head. "All right, look, I'll take her out on a date, okay? Whatever happens happens. Fair enough?"

"Hmph. Well, it's no guarantee, but it's a start I suppose," Junko allowed as she backed off of the martial artist. "All right, just leave the arrangements to me!"

Ranma blinked. "Wait, you're going to arrange it? How would you..." he trailed off as Junko walked out of the room, completely ignoring him as she flipped open a cell phone and started dialing.

Junko glanced back as she left the room, making sure Ranma wasn't following her into the hall before she hit the dial button. After a few seconds, the call connected.

"Mina-chan! Girlfriend! Got an update!" Junko said cheerfully. "It's on! I had to talk him into it, but Ranma-kun is on board!"

_Excellent! You just leave Usagi-chan to me, and those two'll be all over each other in no time!_

"I was a bit skeptical at first when I heard she had a boyfriend, but hey, if they're on a break, it's his problem," Junko reasoned.

_So... any progress on the other thing?_

Junko sweatdropped. "Honey, I'm working on it, but setting up Snake on a date is a little like laying siege to a fortress; you've gotta cover all your angles or you'll just find yourself bashing your head against a wall. Let's stick to the remotely feasible matchmaking for now, okay?"

_All right, all right... so where is Usagi-chan? Is she at headquarters?_

Junko raised an eyebrow. "Actually, I'm not sure. Lemme ask around a bit. She's gotta be somewhere around here."

* * *

"All right, now let's hit a sixty-degree angle with the bus. Commander, you ready?" Tiro called as he stood at the edge of a vehicle junk yard with a digital camcorder.

Kyle set his jaw firmly as he spread his knees, and then gave a silent thumbs-up.

"All right, pick it up!"

At the other edge of the yard, Usagi aimed her hand at an old, wrecked bus next to her, a circular beam emitter rising from her palm. A gentle hum came from her arm as a ray of soft white light lashed out from the disc, and the groan of straining metal filled the air as the mass of wreckage was lifted into the air.

"Easy now..." Tiro murmured as he recorded the feat of technology, carefully zooming in on Usagi before shifting the view over the length of the beam to the projectile. "And... go!"

With a determined grunt, Usagi brought her arm up over her head, the bus raining bits of dirty scrap metal as it followed the movement while its old, rusted frame strained under the tension of the acceleration.

With a harsh snap, the beam unleashed a sudden pulse of zero-point energy, denting the side of the bus inward as the wreck was sent hurtling through the air.

Kyle grit his teeth as the mass of twisted metal sailed toward him.

_WHAM!_ Concrete buckled underfoot as the blond man caught the wreck directly, his muscles straining painfully as he slide backward from the force behind the rusted metal hulk.

After a few moments, however, Kyle was steady on his feet again, and he lifted the shattered vehicle over his head in triumph.

"All right! That's good! Now throw it back!" Tiro demanded as he panned out with the camera. "Usagi-kun, blast it out of the air!"

_Whachak!_ Usagi's combat bracers extended to cover her forearms before a set of conductor coil heat vents opened up on either side of the weaponized gauntlets, a luminous green glow emanating from the coils as the magnetic cyclers below rapidly wove delicate energy fields around clouds of destructive plasma.

Raising her arms, Usagi spat half a dozen plasma bursts at the incoming metal hulk as Kyle hurled it straight at her, and Tiro whistled as the wreckage that was once a city bus evaporated in the air, its metallic skeleton vanishing within clouds of crackling green while the bits surrounding the plasma impacts rained to the ground as droplets of ruddy molten metal.

Usagi looked upon the destruction in satisfaction as she lowered her arms, a small smile gracing her features as acrid smoke slowly dissipated from the impact point between her and Kyle.

"So... why are we doing this again?" she finally asked, scratching her head. Kyle shrugged in response.

"This is training! Training!" Tiro said firmly, nodding his head. "You're learning to... better... utilize your weaponry! Yeah, that's it!"

"That makes perfect sense. I'll stop asking questions now," Usagi said as Kyle nodded.

"Great," Tiro mumbled as he raised the camcorder again. "Now, Usagi-chan, for this next exercise I'm going to need you to take off the armor vest and show me some neckline."

The blonde promptly recoiled. "What? Why do you need that?"

"Ah ah ah! You said you'd stop asking questions!" Kyle pointed out, wagging his finger at his subordinate.

Tiro frowned as his cell phone started ringing, and then put the camera down facing Usagi's general direction. "All right, hold it, I have to take this. You two practice lifting heavy things and putting them in a big pile or something."

Flipping open the hand set, the lecher briefly took note of who was calling before he connected the call. "This better be important Junko-chan, I'm busy making the best YouTube video ever, here."

_Never mind your perverted hobbies. Listen up: "the plan" is go. I've talked Ranma-kun into it and Mina-chan is all ready to bring Usagi-chan around._

Tiro frowned and plugged an ear with his free hand to try and block out the sound of crunching metal behind him. "All right... but are you sure it has to be Saotome? I mean, I'm totally up for this myself!"

It was to Junko's credit that she managed to stifle her laugh well enough that Tiro mistook it for a violent cough. _Well... no. I mean, even if you did manage to pull it off, there's no guarantee you'd survive coitus._

The lecher snorted as he turned around, watching as Usagi heft a bus and then tossed it onto a pile of wrecked vehicles that was already higher than the surrounding buildings. "She doesn't seem that dangerous to me."

_Then congratulations: you're as jaded as the rest of us. Now stop wasting time and bring Usagi back._

"Fine, fine," Tiro mumbled, rolling his eyes. "But if this is going through after all, do you have any-"

Before Tiro could even finish the sentence, Junko cut him off. _Mako-chan is in, five thousand yen for, and Snake is betting eight thousand against._

The lecher scratched his chin for a few seconds before he replied, "I'll match Snakes bet that they do it. Or is there a spread?"

_Unless that's some kind of childish innuendo, no. What about the commander?_

Tiro put the phone down and called out to the two superhumans, both of whom were now cooperating to reinforce the sides of their scrap tower with a few wrecked trailers.

"Hey! Usagi-chan! Could you cover your ears for a minute?" Tiro called.

Usagi gave him a confused look but did as she was asked, pressing her hands flat against her ears.

"Commander, Junko-chan's taking bets on whether or not Ranma'll bang Usagi-chan tonight," Tiro said bluntly.

"What? No way that'll happen so quickly," Kyle said, shaking his head. "Neither of them are real desperate and they have a perfectly good friendship as it is."

"Would you care to attach some money to that opinion?"

"Put me down for ten thousand against, then," Kyle said as he gave the trailer above him a hard shove, shifting it into place.

"Noted," Tiro said, bringing the phone to his ear again. "All right, he's in for ten thousand on Snake's side. I'll get Usagi-chan back to you right away."

As he was speaking, Tiro noted that some of the wreckage that Kyle and Usagi had piled up was starting to fold under the weight put atop it, and he grimaced as he watched the scrap tower slowly tilt over toward where Usagi was standing.

"Hold on a sec. Usagi-chan! Move it! Watch out above you!" Tiro shouted.

Usagi raised an eyebrow, being unable to hear a word Tiro was saying since she still had her hands over her ears. "What? Are you talking to me? I can't hear you!"

"You can take your hands off now!" Tiro said, waiting a few seconds as the blonde simply continued staring in confusion. "Above you! Look up!" the lecher pointed frantically at the teetering wreckage.

"I still can't hear you!" Usagi said, exasperated. "Can I unplug my ea-" _CRASH! Wham! Scrunch!_

Tiro and Kyle winced badly as the cyborg was caught in an avalanche of twisted and rusted steel, and the former sighed before lifting the hand set to his ear again.

"Yeah, so, it might be a little while before we get Usagi-chan back to you."

_What? Why? What was that noise just now?_

"Nothing. See ya later." _Beep!_

* * *

Hotaru's breathing slowed as she felt the Force around her, submerging herself in the distorted blanket of energies that comprised its realm.

A cold prickling at her skin heralded the first attentions of the predators, little more than vague feelings in the back of her mind accompanied by an almost electrical sensation of fear surging through her. Anger, curiosity, and hatred followed the palpable trepidation, and Hotaru was disturbingly aware that most of the emotions were not her own.

When Nal'Shek's presence sought to enter her mind, Hotaru blanched at the feeling. The sensation was dull, blunt, and slightly painful, as if someone was pushing an eraser into her skin.

It also seemed to be unsuccessful, from what she could tell. His spirit, the shimmering collection of Force energy that lay tethered to the material world, was weak and pushed uselessly against her consciousness, failing to claw its way in.

Trying to push away the idle thoughts and emotions that kept gnawing at the back of her mind, Hotaru focused on her master's consciousness, willing it through the wall of her spiritual defenses.

_Don't..._

The sudden voice was soft, yet boomed much louder than the snarling voices from the ether, and Hotaru's concentration was jarred badly at the sudden command.

"What? Why? Why not?" Hotaru demanded, seeking the source of the voice. Was it one of the predators, fearful of her master's expertise, or...

_Do not embark on this path. Do not let the blighted one in._

"The blighted one? Seriously? Who do you think you are, Gandalf?" Hotaru asked, quickly tiring of the enigmatic exchange. "Whatever, just shut up while I do this... like I don't have enough voices in my head."

With that complaint, Hotaru peeled away the layers of her consciousness barring Nal'Shek from her mind, and then the world went dark.

"Hwuh? What was... What's happening?" Hotaru mumbled as she blinked her eyes opening, the haze of colors above her gradually shifting into concise shapes.

One of those shapes was Nal'Shek, his body curiously solid and an impatient look on his face.

"It's about time you let me in. Why did you wait so long?"

Hotaru was about to answer, but her voice faltered as she looked down at her body, and then glanced around at her surroundings. Although it seemed as if she was in her normal, physical body, her surroundings were a cacophony of spilling colors and crackling energy, and she quickly became dizzy trying to take in the sights. "Wait, what is this? Why am I... like this?"

"That's my doing, actually," Nal'Shek responded gruffly as he turned around. "I find it easier to interface with the Force, and especially another consciousness, by forming a mental plane with most of the properties of the physical universe. The power of the mind can give shape, form, and law to mere concepts in order to better utilize them."

Then the Sith stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. "Or, at times, to better destroy them."

"Ah. I see," Hotaru mumbled as she stood up, noting how the "ground" seemed to be a sheet of black marble with purple veins that curled and shifted underneath her feet. "Huh. This does seem more convenient."

"My goodness... is this how you view the Force?" Nal'Shek asked, his eyes wide as he stared up.

All around them curved a massive glass dome supported by great steel ribs that met in the center above their heads, resembling an aquarium enclosure. Outside the glass was an ocean of lights and brilliantly colored fluids that was obviously in a state of total chaos. Currents of enormous power rushed this way and that, smashing into the protective dome with enough force that the supports groaned and the bolts fastening them in place rattled.

"This isn't how I see the Force, this is how the Force is," Hotaru insisted as she walked up to the wall, scowling. She could still hear the voices and sense the emotions, but with her thoughts crystallized into a physical state, they all seemed to echo from beyond the glass, largely muted by the protective shell her subconscious had erected.

"Hotaru, this is clearly a reflection of your inner turmoil; if you are calm, then-" Nal'Shek began to lecture, but to his surprise, he was cut off.

"THIS is not a reflection of my inner anything!" Hotaru snapped, slapping a hand against the glass wall and causing several lights to flash violently immediately outside the dome. "There is nothing in me this... this TWISTED! Even the Silence isn't anything like this! There's a certain... well... purity and morbid sense to it! This 'Force' is nothing like you described! This is insanity! This is-"

"Chaos..." Nal'Shek whispered, the title coming unbidden to his mind. Hotaru felt her blood turn to ice at the sudden naming, and she fearfully stared out at the swirling maelstrom that surrounded them, its lethal currents seeming to carry images of skulls and the stares of hateful, angry souls.

"My apologies. I was not certain to what degree this... place was separated from your personal psyche," the Sith mumbled as he started walking along the circumference. "Regardless, what's important is confirming that the Force is still usable."

He rapped a knuckle against the glass wall that stood between him and the boiling ocean of power. "This represents the mental barriers you've put in place to protect yourself from... what you THINK is out there within the Force. Namely, this reinforced glass is your fear."

Hotaru raised an eyebrow, and Nal'Shek continued. "In the mental realm of the Force, all emotions are powerful tools to control or contain the flow of power. Fear is the protector, shielding your mind from others and preventing you from drawing upon too much energy. However, just as in the world of flesh, fear has its disadvantages."

With that, Nal'Shek pulled one arm back, and Hotaru's eyes widened.

"No! Don't! You haven't seen them yet!" she shouted in a panic. "Those... things are out there! What if they get through?"

The Sith hesitated only a moment, and then smiled at his apprentice. "Do not worry. You have much greater concerns now."

As Nal'Shek's hand slammed against the glass, a great cracking noise like a planet's core snapping in two (Hotaru was unfortunately familiar with the sound) filled the dome, and a small portion of the glass under his palm shot out into the ether in a trail of glittering shards.

All told, it was a far less calamitous breach than she was expecting, and Hotaru felt her not-quite-real heart pounding in her not-quite-real chest as she tried to calm down.

Nal'Shek moved away from the crack as the Force, if one could so simply label the strange liquid that, seeped into the dome enclosure like a viscous, coruscating syrup.

"Here we are," the Sith said cheerfully, raising one hand up. Immediately the fluid leapt to his arm, twirling around but not quite touching the ancient master's old robes.

His other hand went up, and another tendril of energy broke apart into spheres that hovered about his shoulders.

"You have no idea how I missed this!" Nal'Shek laughed, his eyes alight with wonder as the spheres crackled and warped. "Trapped within that feeble shell, nothing more than a weak matrix of images and memory forced into that... spirit form. To know of the glory of the Force, to remember the exhilaration of life, but unable to experience any of it! A keener torture has never been devised, I assure you!"

Hotaru nodded slowly, wondering what the Sith's rantings had to do with anything. "Uh huh. I can imagine. I guess."

"I cannot tell you how long I spent brooding in that ancient fortress, watching the archaic technology rust away to nothing. My satisfaction at obtaining 'immortality' waned promptly, and for the vast majority of the millennia since I was trapped, I have yearned for true death and begged the fates to end my meaningless existence."

Arcs of blue and black lightning surged across Nal'Shek's arms, and the Sith's eyes, trembling with pleasure, finally locked on to Hotaru's.

"Hotaru... my apprentice... I have you to thank for ending my torment."

Hotaru blushed slightly and bowed her head. "Uh... it was nothing. I think..."

"No, this isn't the time for modesty," Nal'Shek said, his cowl flapping back and forth as he shook his head. "I am truly grateful, and as a consequence, I am truly sorry for what must now transpire here."

The purple-haired girl blinked. "Huh?"

Hotaru promptly regretted having taken on a physical form as a lighting arc lashed out from Nal'Shek's arm, catching her entirely by surprise as her body convulsed in agony.

"GYAAAAAH!" she screamed as she tumbled to the marble floor, her body curling into the fetal position as seething arcs of power danced across her flesh. "What are you d-doing?" She demanded through the pain, fighting her muscles as they began to lock into paralysis.

"I would have preferred more time before it were to come to this," Nal'Shek said almost conversationally as he raised one arm, palm up, into the air, "this would be much easier on both of us if you were better attuned to the Force and more capable." At his behest, the marble-like material that made up the floor suddenly rose up around Hotaru, the black stone flowing over her limbs and locking them to the floor one by one in gleaming ebony shackles.

Before long, Hotaru was spread-eagle on the floor, her terrified eyes staring up into those of her former master.

"However, the violent nature of the Force here concerns me, and its obvious your meditations were doing more to unravel my manipulations than progress your training. I fear if I waited much longer, the opportunity may have passed entirely." Nal'Shek continued to explain, more and more of the Force-water gathering in a puddle around his feet and drawing upward into a spiral that surrounded him with spiraling tendrils of power.

Hotaru gulped, willing her body to dissipate and mentally demanding that the floor let her go, but these commands seemed as useless in this mental realm as they did in the physical universe.

"You're probably wondering by now why you've lost all control over a region that is ostensibly within your own mind," Nal'Shek said as he poked one of the Force orbs, causing it to slowly expand. "And as I am still, in a way, acting in the capacity of a teacher, I feel obliged to explain: This realm exists within your mind, but it is also the nexus at which you interact with the Force, and the point at which you allowed me to enter your psyche. The Force exerts at least as much control over what happens here as you do, and it cedes such power to whatever thoughts have the greatest control over its power. Namely me," the Sith explained calmly as he stepped forward and leaned over the helpless young woman. "Allowing me to shape this place into a quasi-physical plane helped, of course. I'm afraid you'll find you're quite at my mercy."

Shimmering tears spilled from Hotaru's eyes as her body shook, trembling in fear. "What do you want? Are... Are you going to f-force yourself on me?"

A sweatdrop promptly slipped down the back of Nal'Shek's head. "Rather stuck on that idea, aren't you? No, I won't. And even if I desired such petty indulgences, now would hardly be the time."

He coughed into his fist as the slowly swelling sphere of Force energy started to grow spikes. "No, my apprentice, carnal satisfaction is hardly my goal. You have offered me a vessel, and I am in no position to refuse it. Once I have bound your psyche entirely, I will submerge you deep within your own consciousness, and I will take control of your body. I, Nal'Shek, Dark Lord of the Sith, shall be reborn!" He spread his arms wide as the spiked orb started to rotate wildly, and then his enthusiasm suddenly abated and he coughed into his fist again. "Granted, I'll be reborn into a fairly weak female body on a backwards planet out on the fringes of nowhere, but I'm not exactly flush with options, here."

Hotaru took several seconds to think on what he had said. "That's... That's even worse than raping me!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, undoubtedly, but I assure you it's not nearly as much fun," Nal'Shek said as he plucked the spiked Force sphere from the air by one of its spines. "Now that you know what is about to occur, there's only one more obstacle left before we can begin."

With that, the Sith suddenly pointed to the side, and the spined orb came alive with dark lightning as it blasted off in that direction, spinning crazily as it went.

Hotaru's head moved to follow its motion, but she was a little late in tracking it, and by the time she'd turned her head it had detonated against its target, filling the air with brilliant light that completely obscured her vision.

As the light faded, however, Hotaru could see ribbons of energy dancing along the circumference of a domed energy field, and her eyes widened as she saw who stood within the barrier.

"Nal'Shek. I was wondering what you were really up to. Thank you for making this confrontation possible," said Sailor Saturn, her eyes impassive as she angled the Silence Glaive at the Sith. "Earlier you expressed a desire to die. Allow me to help."

* * *

Minako hummed happily to herself as she jogged up to the front of DAPC headquarters, idly checking her watch to note the time.

'Well, I'm a little early, but I'm sure I can find something to do,' she thought as she pushed her way through the front doors of the building. After all, time spent around the DAPC was anything but boring.

Just as one example, Minako froze to a halt when she heard the door she was swinging open smack into something, and she felt her heart drop into her stomach as she heard a feral, rumbling growl coming from the other side.

Hunter curled his head around the edge of the door, his blood-red eyes glaring at the blond intruder.

"Uh... um... g-good boy?" Minako tried, her face paling as she started to step back.

The rumbling snarl that came from the alien war beast was not encouraging, and Hunter slammed the side of his head into the door to send it swinging shut, giving him a clear shot at pouncing on the hapless blonde.

"Hunter, knock it off!" snapped a voice off to the side, and Minako felt a palpable sense of relief as she spotted Asuka entering the room from one of the hallways.

The police captain had obviously just come from working out, as she was wearing a tank-top and had a gym towel over her shoulders that she was using to wipe away her sweat. "You can't show fear to that thing, Aino-san; it just provokes him. If you want Hunter to leave you alone, the best thing to do is ignore him."

"H-How do you IGNORE a monster like that?" Minako shuddered, quickly retreating through the middle of the lobby and moving behind her savior. "Why do you let it roam around the place as it wants?"

"Well, there's SUPPOSED to be other people here to watch him, but it seems like they all found other things to do," Asuka said irritably. "I don't suppose you'd know anything about why Chikiko has been trying to hook up Usagi and Ranma, do you?"

Minako sweatdropped as she laughed. "What? She's really trying to do that? That's so funny!" Minako was a fair actor, and so managed to avoid the nervous cackle that would have given away just about anyone else she knew, but Asuka still didn't look convinced. "Ah, that's right! I was wondering if I could speak to Rei-chan today!"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "You mean now? Well, I suppose you can try, but she's fast asleep. You don't think she'd mind?"

"I haven't had a chance to really talk to her since she had her humanity stolen from her and was turned into a bloodsucking monster," Minako said matter-of-factly as she passed by Asuka to the elevator. "I think she can put aside a half an hour to talk to one of her best friends, Asuka-chan."

A vein promptly popped up on Asuka's head as she yelled after the blonde. "For pity's sake, I'm almost a decade older than you! Would it kill you to address me with-" alas, her complaint was cut short by the elevator door closing behind Minako, and a shaky hum filled the room as it began its slow descent to the vaults.

"Just what have we brought into my station?" Asuka mumbled to herself as she massaged her forehead. "My actual officers were bad enough, but lately Usagi's friends have been treating this place as their own personal hangout spot. Before long I'll bet they're going to start holding keggers and eldritch ceremonies here too."

The thought of eldritch ceremonies brought her thoughts back around to Rei, and Asuka's eyes narrowed. There was a topic she wished to discuss with the DAPC's newest member, and she really would have preferred that it not wait until nightfall.

"Well, if she's going to be woken up anyway..."

* * *

"Hey! Rei-chan! Reeeeeiiii-chaaaaan!" Minako called as she bounded over to the lacquered black coffin in the center of the sub-level vaults. "Hey, sleepy-head! Wake up!"

Smiling brightly, and willfully ignoring the Gothic and tomb-themed embellishments that decorated the vampiric Senshi's bedroom, the cheery blonde rapped her knuckles against the coffin before grabbing the heavy iron chains and rattling them noisily.

"Rei-chan! It's me! Are you up?" she asked, raising her voice even further.

A muffled growling noise, not entirely dissimilar from the ones she had just heard from Hunter, emanated from the sarcophagus before an exhausted-sounding voice finally spoke.

"Wha? Mina... chan? It's day..."

Minako had to lean in closer to the casket to hear, and she promptly rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know you're nocturnal now, but you can miss out on an hour of sleep, can't you? The early bird catches two other birds with its stone!"

"... Tha's wrong. Go 'way," Rei mumbled, the coffin creaking slightly from its occupant shifting within.

"C'mon Rei-chan! I want to hear about your adventure the other night!" Minako said, tapping a finger against the shining black lacquer and idly admiring the designs.

"Ask Usagi. Sleepy," came the terse reply.

Minako frowned. "Well, then can I at least tell you about this great plan I have to get Usagi and Ranma to hook up?"

"Nope," Rei mumbled. "Are you leaving yet?"

With a determined expression on her face, Minako picked up the heavy padlock and inspected it. "Stop being such a stick in the sand, Rei-chan. I just have to unlock this, right? Is the key here or-"

"Hey, Mina-chan!" Rei said, her voice suddenly sounding crisp and perfectly lucid through the polished black casket, "Did you know that the DAPC has a few moon cats in cryo-sleep down here in the sub-levels?"

"WHAT?" Minako gasped, dropping the padlock immediately as her eyes widened. "Seriously? There are moon cats here?"

"Yes! I don't remember where, exactly, so you'll probably get lost and not find your way back here for a few hours, but I'm sure they're down here somewhere! You should go get them!"

"Right away!" Minako said, all thoughts of conversation forgotten as she dashed blindly into the halls beyond the prison vaults. "Wow, I never thought we'd find more moon cats! Wait until I tell Artemis!"

A blissful sigh came from Rei's sarcophagus as Minako's exclamations of wonder and surprise faded into the distance, swallowed by the vast steel enclosure that was her home and prison.

At last, silence. Come dusk, Rei would be (almost) happy to chatter with Minako about whatever stupid thing she wanted to talk about, but for now daylight was sleepy time.

Not that Minako had anything useful to talk about. Really now, who cared about who in the DAPC was hooking up with who?

"Wait..." came Rei's voice from her coffin, sounding curiously alert, "WHAT?"

_Bam!_ The sarcophagus shook from a sudden impact inside it, and Rei yelped before releasing a string of profanities as the chains holding her casket closed refused to yield.

"Goddamn useless police and their stupid useless security!" the vampiress growled as she started beating against the lid of her coffin, finding to her annoyance that her body refused to simply phase through it; probably because it was still daylight outside.

"Minako! Are you still out there! If you are, get back here and let me out!" Rei demanded. "Can you hear me? Look, forget about the cats! Trust me, our team is dysfunctional enough! Hello?"

_Chak! Clunk!_

Rei breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the familiar sound of the lock popping open and dropping off, and then promptly sat up in her coffin, pushing the lid open as the chains slid out of place. "Finally! Mina-chan, what did you mean when... you... said..."

The vampiress trailed off as she stared into the eyes of Asuka Takami, who was standing at the edge of her casket and twirling the padlock key around a finger.

"Oh. Uh... hi," she said awkwardly. It didn't escape Rei's notice that the police captain seemed rather nonplussed about something. "Can I help you?"

"Maybe, I was just curious about something and thought you might be able to help," Asuka drawled. "Tell me, what quality of Saotome's blood makes it so irresistible to vampires? Is it the unique white blood cells, or does it have to do with that 'ki' nonsense he's always going on about?"

Rivulets of sweat started to run down Rei's face, and her eyes glanced left and right for any sign of Minako to use as a distraction. "Wh-What an odd question to ask me! Huh! I'll have to think about it!" she said nervously, making to close the coffin as she shrunk back inside it. "I should have an answer for you in, oh, maybe five or six hours?"

_Thump!_ Asuka promptly slammed her boot against the coffin lid, holding it in place. "No, by all means, answer NOW."

The vampiress gulped. "Well, I can't really say myself, but when I asked Ranma about it, he said it was due to elevated 'awesome levels' in his blood! You should really talk to him about that!"

"I would, but he seems rather skittish on the topic of vampires drinking his blood nowadays," Asuka deadpanned, her eyes narrowing. "However, he's an even worse liar than you are, so it hasn't helped your case any."

"Hey! I didn't lie!" Rei insisted, bristling. "Not once did I actually say I didn't drink Ranma's blood!"

Asuka's eyebrow rose, and Rei's face darkened.

"Well... uh... crap."

Asuka cleared her throat as the vampiress deflated. "All right, let's take this from the top: I want you to explain to me exactly why and how this arrangement came about. Obviously it's consensual, since I really doubt you could feed off of Ranma if he didn't let you, but I think it's best if we nip this in the bud right away."

Rei felt a surge of angry heat shoot through her body at the thought of being denied any more of Ranma's "donations". "Hey! What the hell gives you the right to come in here and dictate terms to ME?" the vampiress demanded, pushing the lid open completely and standing up so that she could glare down at Asuka properly. "It's none of your business!"

The police captain was perfectly unphased. "Hino-san, I run a police department charged with suppressing supernatural threats to this city, am personally responsible for restraining any danger you represent to humans, am your superior officer, and have a duty to maintain the good health and combat readiness of my officers, particularly Ranma. So actually, yes, it IS my business. So we're going to have a nice, long talk about your recent feeding habits whether you like it or not."

Rei's eyes narrowed, annoyed that the other woman hadn't even flinched at their confrontation. "Or what?"

In response, Asuka leaned over to the side, opening up a metal box that was lying next to her feet. After rummaging through it briefly, she stood up again as she loaded a crossbow with a gleaming silver stake in the ammunition groove.

Rei sweatdropped as she gaped. "You... You built a stake-thrower?"

"No, Snake did," Asuka admitted as she finished loading the weapon, and she gestured to the box. "He filled these security boxes with stake-throwers, silver crosses, holy water, and garlic spray and then scattered them all around the department as anti-vampire kits."

Rei raised an eyebrow. "In case of another midian uprising?"

"I'm pretty sure that wasn't the idea," Asuka deadpanned. "Snake even included a field manual in how to hunt and kill you."

"Really? He made a manual on hunting vampires?"

"No, he made a manual on hunting YOU," Asuka corrected, rummaging through the box again and lifting up a thin booklet. Rei was extremely discouraged to see a photograph of herself on the cover with a target drawn over her heart.

"You've really got to send that guy to a tolerance seminar or something," Rei groused, slumping back down into her coffin.

"I'll look into it. But for now, I have questions you need to answer," the police captain insisted.

Rei sighed. "What do you want to know?"

* * *

"Here, kitty-kitty-kitty! Heeeeeere kitty!" Minako called as she wandered the dark metal halls, her head whipping left and right as she searched.

"Dang, where would they keep a couple of moon cats around here, anyway?" the blonde murmured to herself as she reached a fork in the hall and glance in either direction.

To the right was a sign with an arrow that read "Small Organism Cryogenic Storage".

To the left was a sign with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction that read "Annoying Organism Cells".

Minako barely hesitated before turning into the left corridor.

"Let's see..." she mumbled as she found herself in a new corridor lined with reinforced cell doors, each one with a glass viewing slit for seeing the interior of the cell.

She had just moved to look into the first slit when she felt a shiver crawl down her back, and the blonde whirled around sharply.

"Hello? Is someone there?" Minako asked, her eyes flashing back and forth. The halls were poorly lit, with almost half of the sequenced ceiling lights dead or flickering - presumably to give the cold steel labyrinth even more of a "horror movie laboratory" feel - but there was still enough light that Minako could see that there was nothing following her.

"Rei-chan? Is that you?" Minako tried, wondering if her undead friend might be trying to play a trick on her.

After several more seconds and no response, the blonde slowly turned back to the door, though she remained on full alert and kept glancing over her shoulder.

The viewing pane was rather dirty and grimy from countless years of neglect, so Minako had to take her handkerchief and rub the exterior clean enough to actually see through.

Not that there was much to see. Much to the blonde's disappointment, all that lay within the cell was some sort of squat, dwarf-sized skeleton and what appeared to be a shriveled patchwork heart lying over it.

Frowning, she back away and noted that there was a name plate that was similarly caked with dust in the middle of door. A quick wipe of the handkerchief made the words on the plate legible.

"What the heck is a 'Care Bear'?" Minako wondered, moving on to the next cell.

After wiping the next viewing slit clean, she saw what appeared to be a large colony of mushrooms that covered the entire floor. It was hard to see because the glass was still dirty on the other side from dirt and spores, but some of the mushrooms appeared to have little holes cut in them, like little doors and windows.

The name plate, after being cleaned, simply said "Smurfs".

Looking puzzled, Minako moved on to the next cell, this time wiping the name plate clean first to see what was inside.

The plate read "Tom Green".

"Eugh... I hope it's dead," she mumbled distastefully, grimacing as she moved on without looking inside.

Suddenly, she felt her skin crawl again, and Minako turned sharply to stare down the hallway.

"Who's there?" she demanded, frowning as she gripped her transformation pen behind her back. "Come out and face me!"

_Shlup!_

Minako frowned as she heard a strange squishing noise coming from somewhere nearby, and slowly turned in a circle as she look down both ends of the long corridor.

"Hello?"

As the blonde continued glancing back and forth warily, a thick, black, oozing tendril slowly lowered itself from the air duct in the ceiling. It drew back for a moment, and then, with sharp snap, stuck itself to the back of Minako's neck, startling her badly.

"GYAH! COLD! WET! GET IT OFF!" Minako shrieked as she felt a thick, syrupy tentacle slip around her shoulders. "NOOOOOOO!"

She tried to run, but the goo seemed to predict the reaction and moved to stop her, wrapping around the girl's torso and leg before sticking solidly to the floor. Minako tried to pull free, but the slime seemed to expand rapidly over her body, and as she looked down in horror, she saw the creeping black slime quickly enveloping her.

Though her mind was almost blind with panic from the bizarre and terrifying situation, her eyes suddenly focused on her transformation pen, and Minako took a deep breath as the dark goo started to draw itself up to her jaw and wrap itself around her face.

"Venus crystal power, make up!" she managed to shout before the web of blackness stretched over her mouth.

As the transformation took hold and the lights started to appear, Minako felt something in the back of her mind; a voice she had never heard before. It spoke to her in those first few seconds, its words rich with wonder, joy, hope, and even love at what it had discovered, what it was seeing.

And then, all at once, the world went dark.

* * *

_Crack!_ The black marble floor trembled around the bottom of the Silence Glaive as Sailor Saturn tapped the butt of the weapon on the ground, and then a moment later a seething wave of purple energy ripped through the ground in the direction of her foe.

Nal'Shek stopped the attack with a gesture, sending a small orb of Force into the floor immediately ahead of the of the attack.

_BWOOM!_ The resultant explosion strained the entire dome with its shock wave, tearing huge gouges into the marble flooring and sending shining, polished rubble flying.

"Ha ha ha ha ha! Aha ha haaa!" the Sith laughed as he let loose with a web of Force lightning, the dark spears splashing harmlessly against Saturn's Silence Wall.

As the senshi of destruction spun her glaive about in one hand, she frowned while she analyzed her tactical situation as compared to her enemy's. "Why do you laugh, tainted spirit? This encounter will soon unmake you."

"Isn't it funny?" Nal'Shek asked between giggles as even more of the veritable ocean of power dripped through the cracks in the glass barrier to join with him. "Here we are, two ghosts of long-dead civilizations, desperately fighting to control the malnourished body of a single weak, little girl! A Sith Lord and the so-called Senshi of Destruction, a conqueror and an annihilator of entire planets respectively, struggling like wild beasts for a rotting carcass!"

With a flurry of hand gestures, the floor under the Sith started to break apart, causing large chunks of the black marble to rise from the ground all around him. "How far we have fallen, no?" he thrust his palm forward, and the rocks immediately rocketed forth toward Saturn in a loose spread.

Sailor Saturn didn't reply immediately, dashing forward as she broke her defensive posture. Moving straight for the biggest piece of flooring, she cleaved it apart explosively with a quick slash of the Silence Glaive, sending out a shock wave that knocked many of the small rocks away in the shock wave.

A second large chunk of marble was flying in behind it, and Saturn elegantly jumped atop it, running along the top of the projectile as it sped under her and leaping into the air once she reached the end of its length.

With a snort, Nal'Shek summoned a bolt of liquid power into his hand, the fluid hardening and extending roughly a meter before it seemed to come alive with electric current.

_Fzash!_ The Force blade met the Silence Glaive, and both combatants were knocked back from the shock wave that resulted, Saturn barely managing to land on her feet as she skidded backward across the polished floor. Nal'Shek's body fell hard against the Force energy that surrounded him, the power seeming to cushion him and hold him upright with a fraction of the effort his foe displayed.

"You're not wanted here, corrupt spirit," Saturn hissed as she darted forward once again, spinning into a wide slash that made full use of the Silence Glaive's longer reach.

A wall of fluid Force came to protect its master, and it barely succeeded as the glaive sliced a deep trench into the makeshift barrier, the lethal edge trailing crackling purple sparks.

"This isn't what anybody wants, I assure you!" the Sith replied as he jumped forward to bring his own weapon down on Saturn, being blocked by the haft of the glaive. "We've all suffered tremendously in our journeys, and there's still much suffering to be done!" A few more quick slashes were all deflected by Saturn, seemingly without effort. "This is about destiny, girl! And I will not have mine cut short so easily!"

Retreating briefly from his assault, Nal'Shek beckoned Saturn forward with his free hand.

The senshi of destruction jerked forward awkwardly as she felt the Silence Glaive attempt to leave her hand, as if someone was tugging hard on it. Although she managed to keep her grip, the unexpected force staggered her, and Nal'Shek happily dove into the opening before slashing across Saturn's flank with his weapon.

Hotaru watched all this from her prison on the floor, her heart pounding desperately as her eyes glanced all around at the devastation the combatants had wrought. She knew that this area was, ultimately, an impression created by her mind, with none of the particular vulnerabilities or dangers of true glass, steel, or pressure, but as she watched liquid power seep from the cracks in the dome and pool on the floor around her, it was difficult to appreciate the unreality of the situation.

She felt like she should say something, or try to help in some way, but she simply didn't know what to do. She was completely helpless here, a prisoner in her own mind as forces far beyond her control struggled for control of her body.

It was not an unfamiliar feeling.

_Fzash! Joot!_ Saturn grunted as the Force sword scored a glancing slash across her face, leaving a thick scorch mark running from her chin to her ear. As she brought the butt of the weapon around into Nal'Shek's side, the Sith simply blocked with his free arm, slapping the ancient weapon away.

_Whomp!_ Frankly, a kick was the last thing the senshi of destruction expected in this battle, and she was sent reeling as her enemy booted her in the stomach.

Nal'Shek smiled as he launched another wave of Force lightning, and was extremely satisfied to hear the sizzling of burning flesh as the bolts connected. "In this place, I'm afraid every advantage is mine, 'Princess'," he said mockingly as he advanced, the coils of black power constantly digging into the senshi.

Even with the mind-numbing pain induced by the lightning, Saturn refused to scream, and a wide, desperate slash of her glaive dispersed the electric arcs burning her.

Staggering to her feet, the Senshi quickly pointed toward the advancing Sith. "Silence Wall!"

Nal'Shek clicked his tongue at the delaying tactic and placed his hand against the energy field as he watched Saturn limp away on the other side. "Run all you like, spirit. You cannot hide from me." Tendrils of power rose up around him and started to drill into the Silence Wall, the points of contact rippling like the surface of a pond disturbed by a pebble.

Saturn stumbled over to Hotaru, her body weakened and scorched in a dozen places. Her right eye was a blackened pit, and her left flank where Nal'Shek had scored his first clean hit was little more than charcoal, the searing energies having burned and fused the organs beneath the skin.

All purely imaginary damage, of course, but this realm had been created with great calculation, and Saturn could feel her strength failing just as surely as if it was her real body that suffered.

"Hotaru. Come. We must cut ourselves off from this place," Saturn said as she approached the girl and sliced open her stone shackles with quick snaps of the Silence Glaive. "We cannot stop Nal'Shek from gathering his power here, but we can fight him in your mind and soul properly, rather than this... nexus we find ourselves in. We are too weak here."

"No..." Hotaru whispered, looking past Saturn to where the Silence Wall finally disintegrated before the Sith.

"There's no more time! Get up!" Sailor Saturn demanded, grabbing the girl and hauling her to her feet.

Hotaru barely seemed to respond, still not looking at the senshi or in fact acknowledging her at all. "No... no, no, no, no, no... stop... don't come any closer..."

"Hotaru, my dear, please, just surrender," Nal'Shek sighed as he approached the two women, the Force practically boiling around him in a storm of pure power, "I promise that the process will be far less painful, and that I will be far kinder to your subdued soul, should you not resist pointlessly. Won't you give up?"

A wracking sob came from deep within Hotaru's throat, and tears seeped freely from her eyes as she collapsed at Saturn's feet, her body completely numb from terror. "It's here..." she whispered.

Saturn and Nal'Shek blink-blinked. "Huh?" they asked in unison.

The sound of the glass dome wall being breached was hardly deafening. In fact, the relatively small amount of noise produced by the small crack being smashed wide open made it all the more terrifying as the creature forced its way into Hotaru's consciousness.

Its shape was large, long, and twisted and seemed to go on forever, as if actually part of the ocean from which it emerged. Serrated scythes stuck out of numberless small wriggling limbs, each one desperately thrashing about for a target independent of any attack plan or sensory input. Eye were scattered across the length of its worm-like body in a fashion more becoming of warts or other dermal maladies, some of them gleaming black orbs, while others were human-like and bloodshot.

Its mouth was necessarily its most important feature, and not merely because it was yawning open to seize Nal'Shek's back. Massive curving fangs decorated the outer lips of its puckered orifice, and within its dripping confines dozens of smaller jaws writhed and snapped angrily, eager to get their own share of the kill.

Time seemed to slow as the Sith Lord whirled around to face the new threat, the Force swirling around his hands in preparation for battle.

"WHAT THE FU-" _Crunch!_

Hotaru watched in mute horror as the Sith's mental projection was mashed into a bloody pulp, his body folding in on itself as dozens of bone-crushing teeth closed in on him at once. Tendrils of the Force that had stood strong before the Silence Glaive yielded like butter before the predator, the entire structure of energy patterns and arcane rituals collapsing instantly.

Hotaru was more or less aware of Sailor Saturn's disappearance as she watched the terrible scene unfold, her numb body spattered with bits of gore and tainted light that flooded from the Sith's faux body in its death throes.

After a few seconds, the twisted pulp that used to be Nal'Shek was sucked entirely into the predator's puckered mouth, the whole orifice shaking and twitching as the secondary jaws within dug into the meal with gusto.

She felt a massive surge of power as the predator reared back and howled in delight, the Sith Lord's spirit suffusing it with new strength.

Hotaru could feel it with awful sensitivity: the absorption and death of a soul. The annihilation of a creature on the most basic level possible. And yet, even as his spirit, his thoughts, and everything that remained of the creature Nal'Shek was greedily devoured, she could still sense him trying to escape, to get a precious few nuggets of knowledge and emotion to safety...

Any thinking on her former master's fate ceased as the predator slowly turned toward her.

'No, not predator,' she thought, a new word bubbling up from nowhere, 'a daemon.'

Regardless of what it was called, she was potently aware that it would destroy her if she didn't get away, and she immediately set about trying to escape this non-reality and sever herself from the Force. She could already feel the bonds that held this strange, pseudo-reality together weakening, if she could just cut it away completely.

"No," she whispered as the daemon slithered forward, its progress making ripples in the pond of liquid Force that now filled her mental chamber, spilling into the craters caused by the earlier combat. "No!" she screamed louder as the world seemed to go gray about her and the daemon opened its mouth. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

* * *

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Hotaru screamed as her eyes burst open, exposing her real retinas to real light for the first time in about an hour.

The shock of suddenly plunging back into the real world knocked the young woman flat on her back, and for a few seconds Hotaru simply lay there, hyperventilating as she stared at the ragged stone ceiling of Nal'Shek's cave.

A million thoughts seemed to fly through her head at once as thoughts, ideas, and realization poured into her. Memories came unbidden to her mind, many of which were definitely not hers. Other ideas that were hers but had been previously subdued by the Sith's manipulations likewise fought to the fore.

Amongst the flurry of mental activity came a rather intense urge to vomit, and Hotaru promptly pushed all other thoughts aside and turned to face the ground in order to act on it.

She wasn't sure exactly how much time she spent retching, only that her body felt an urgent, almost primordial need to purge itself in order to clear the overwhelming sense of despair and violation.

Curiously enough, much of that dark malaise seemed to fade away as a particularly thick bit of stomach wastage spilled onto the ground, as if the gooey wad were a physical chunk of her emotional suffering.

Hotaru's eyes widened as she made the connection in her mind, and she leapt backward onto her butt as she saw a fleshy, pulsing blob emerge from the thin puddle of muck she had spit up.

"No! Get away from me!" she screamed, scrambling to her feet as she ran to the edge of the cavern.

When she reached the wall she turned back fearfully, and her stomach lurched once again as she saw that the... thing that had breached the Immaterium and crawled out of her had grown even larger, nearly to the size of a soccer ball. Bulges started to appear and seams in its boiling flesh split open, and even from a good ten meters away she could smell a noxious gas emanating from the creature.

"It's... It's the daemon, isn't it?" Hotaru said to herself, her disgust almost tangible at the thought that this foul thing had emerged from her. Fear started to burn away into hatred as the anger of all the most recent events began to bubble up within her. Why the hell did she have to put up with this, anyway? Wasn't it bad enough that she had been forced to watch helplessly as two otherworldly powers fought a battle in her mind over control of her body and her future? That all of the effort and misery of the past few weeks had led up to an enormous betrayal and nearly had her enslaved forever? What was all this for? What did this filthy aberration want that it had to do this to her?

With a thought, her transformation pen was in her hand, and Hotaru gripped the cool metal tightly. As terrible as this creature was, it was out of its element now; this she knew. It's realm was the mind, and the violent river that existed beyond the veil between dimensions. Now it was in her world, playing by nature's rules, and the urge to educate it harshly in the reality of energy emissions and physics sounded like a welcome reprieve from the mind games she had been forced to partake in.

And yet... as she raised the pen into the air, something prevented her from speaking her transformation phrase. She wanted the daemon dead and gone, definitely... but somehow the idea of doing it as Sailor Saturn annoyed her.

Hotaru's eyes narrowed as she watched bony limbs burst from the daemon's twitching body, each one scratching clumsily about to try and figure out locomotion in this strange new realm. There was another way.

Putting away her transformation pen, Hotaru dashed along the wall to the door that led to the inner sanctum, turning past a set of massive pistons that pumped magma into the deeper volcanic vents.

Glancing around, she located the doorway to the catacombs despite having never bothered to explore such a place within the caverns, and then ducked under the small doorway into the dank, unlit room beyond.

A mere thought created a small mote of light in the palm of her hand to aid in her search, although honestly she probably didn't need it. She located a specific sarcophagus immediately and pointed to it, and the pitted stone slab that covered the crude casket slid aside.

Despite the specific memories that she had picked out to lead her here, Hotaru was still somewhat unsure as to what it was she was here to find, and initially when she looked inside the sarcophagus only to find a metal cylinder the length of a serving spoon she was somewhat confused.

'Is this a weapon? It doesn't look like one,' she thought to herself as she reached into the coffin and picked it up.

"Sssssthrrrrrrh..." A quick glance over her shoulder made her spine tingle and her blood boil all at once as she caught sight of the creature tormenting her. It was bigger now, with almost a dozen spider-like legs that ended in uneven hooking claws. Hateful, bloodshot eyes dotted the central fleshy sphere of its body seemingly at random, all of them flitting back and forth in an unfocused panic.

It was obvious, however, that Hotaru held its undivided attention, and without further hesitation, it broke into a loping run at the young woman.

Hotaru grit her teeth and turned the metal tube parallel to the ground, pointing the only end that wasn't covered in metal at the approaching daemon. "Well, here goes everything," she mumbled as she thumbed the most obvious switch on the device.

_Psheeew! Vwom!_ A beam of blue light suddenly poured from the cylinder, extending almost three feet before stopping in place.

Hotaru hadn't been sure what to expect from the weapon, so she spent a few critical moments standing still in surprise before she realized what she was holding and what was likely the best way to utilize it. The daemon was not similarly phased, and immediately lunged the moment it was within range to do so.

_Vyooom!_ Hotaru twisted around the flailing limbs and then slashed down at an angle with her new light saber, taking off two of the daemon's limbs in a burst of crackling light and a puff of burning ozone.

The daemon howled and tried to reach more of its limbs up to attack, but instead stumbled as it lost its balance and tumbled onto the ground.

_Vsash! Ksshk!_ "Look at you! Pathetic freak!" Hotaru snapped as she took off several more legs with sharp sweeps of her new weapon. "You think I'm afraid of you? You think you can violate me as you please? You're nothing to me!"

The daemon hissed angrily as it tried to lift its bulk on its three remaining legs and failed, its burnt stumps wiggling uselessly even as the unnatural flesh heaved to try and repair itself.

_Whomp!_ Hotaru viciously kicked the beast in the side of its body, sending it rolling across the width of the hall and tumbling into an open casket that was dug in low to the ground.

A sharp gesture with her free hand slid a casket lid off of the sarcophagus on the barrow above it, and the heavy stone slab slowly floated down before sliding over the stone coffin that housed the daemon. "Welcome to reality," Hotaru said as she floated the entire sarcophagus out of its drawer slot and toward the small doorway, "don't let the door hit you on the way out."

With a wave of her hand, an enormous burst of Force shoved the sarcophagus out of the catacombs and sent it skidding across the cavern floor, directly toward one of the massive pistons as the cylinder was pulling itself up to allow its pumping chamber to fill with gas and lava from the pool below.

_CRUNCH!_ Hotaru poked her head out to watch as the mass of steel utterly pulverized the stone coffin before grinding it into a pool of compressed magma, the heat and pressure annihilating the shattered remains in the space of two seconds.

Hotaru was honestly a little ashamed at the amount of pride and morbid pleasure that she felt from seeing the completion of her kill, and only as she glanced down at the light saber still humming in her hand did she realize how hard her heart was pounding.

With the daemon gone and all other physical distractions negligible, the chaotic jumble of thoughts, images, and feelings once again demanded her attention.

As Hotaru continued staring at her new weapon, however, she frowned, and once more her focus shifted the extraneous thoughts to the back of her mind.

"This thing doesn't look right," she decided as she glared at the light saber blade, and with only the barest inkling of what she was doing, she started poking at the device and looking for adjustment dials.

_Gszt! Click!_ She twisted the length of the handle, and was surprised to feel the balance of the device change as the blade almost doubled in length instantly, making it longer than she was tall. She still wasn't satisfied though, and started playing with a dial at the base of the weapon.

This only caused the energy blade to flicker and spark, however. "Oh, come on! How do you work this thing?" Hotaru demanded, tightening her fist around it.

Then she swung her arm to the side and smashed the handle of the weapon hard against the steel wall.

_BANG! Bzzzzsht!_

The light saber blade flickered for a few seconds, and then it seemed to recover full function once again, this time with its beam colored a dark purple.

"Perfect!" Hotaru said cheerfully before she switched the weapon off, fully satisfied.

And then, without further distraction, she sat down and closed her eyes as she descended into deep meditation.

* * *

"I didn't want to bite him! I swear!" Rei said, throwing her arms up as she sat cross-legged atop her coffin while Asuka listened carefully and jotted down notes on a clipboard. "But then he threw down that line, 'you can either drink my blood now, or you can see it splattered on the ground when I have to come save you'! What was I supposed to do?"

Asuka frowned as she wrote the line down. "That sounds like Saotome-san, all right. So now you feed on him regularly?"

Rei cringed. "I didn't want it to be like this. Ranma-kun means more to me than just a meal. I just... I thought that maybe this way he wouldn't have to protect me anymore."

Asuka raised an eyebrow as she looked up at the midian. "You don't want him to protect you?"

"Well..." Rei fidgeted uncomfortably. "Right now all I have is my power, you know? I'm not human and I can't pretend like nothing's changed. If I've sacrificed even my humanity and become an immortal monster, then at least I want to be able to protect the people I care about rather than the other way around."

The police captain frowned as she jotted that down. "Well, I certainly approve of your attitude, but not your methods. Putting aside the purely moral repercussions of eating one of your fellow officers, you must realize that drawing so much blood from Saotome has begun to endanger his health."

Rei's face darkened, and Asuka raised an eyebrow as a few dark blue flames popped into existence above her head. "Ah. I see you hadn't realized that. Has the feeding become... more than a simple means to energize yourself? I mean, considering you haven't had a major engagement since the operation against Wraith, you haven't exactly been burning away the... what did you say his power was?"

"Awesome. I haven't been burning away the awesome," Rei admitted shamefully. "You're right. You're right about everything. His blood just... it just tastes so GOOD! And RANMA obviously doesn't know how much I need, because he's in here every morning, practically shoving his jugular into my mouth!" the vampiress complained, her face flushing.

Asuka winced. "Uh... you've got some... drool there..." she tapped her own lower lip.

Rei quickly wiped her mouth with her arm. "Okay, look, Asuka-chan, I-"

"CAPTAIN," Asuka snapped, her teeth clenching in irritation.

"Whatever! I can live without biting Ranma. Or... unlive, I suppose. That's not the problem. But I can't take the temptation!" she insisted, her eyes manic as she grabbed Asuka by the shoulders. "He comes in here all the time with his delicious blood and caring words and disarming personality and rock-hard abs and amazing ass and-"

"You're, uh, salivating again," Asuka deadpanned. "Aside from that, I'm not sure that-"

"Hello? Rei-chan! You're awake!" both women were startled by Minako's voice suddenly emerging from the other side of the room, and they turned to see the rather disheveled-looking blonde step out from the halls leading deeper into the facilities. "I heard something about an amazing ass and came running. What'd I miss?"

"Uh... Mina-chan, did something happen?" Rei said awkwardly. Her eyes looked sleepy and bloodshot, while her skirt and blouse were rumpled and dirty. In a different place and time, she would have guessed that her promiscuous friend had just had a short tryst with someone in the vicinity, but she was fairly certain there was nothing in the sub-levels that even Minako would want to get naked for.

Minako blinked, and her eyebrows climbed up her forehead as she considered the question. "You know... I'm not sure."

"You don't know if something happened," Asuka deadpanned, honestly wondering if something about blond hair follicles literally bleached the brain's synapses clean. "Either it did or it didn't."

The blonde scratched her head as she frowned, staring at the floor. "It's... odd. I can't remember the last few minutes. I know I was searching for those moon cats, and-"

"Oh, God, PLEASE don't unfreeze those things," Asuka said with a groan. "The pink one is just annoying, and I'm terrified of what would happen if Snake adopted the tom."

The two senshi gave her an odd look, but then attention shifted back to Minako.

"Well, I couldn't really find them. I was looking through the cells, and I'd just gotten to the one with Tom Green..." she suddenly looked pensive. "By the way, he's not still alive in there, is he?"

Asuka shrugged. "Nobody's had the nerve to check."

"Okay, well, after that, I remember... uh..." Minako frowned as she crossed her arms under her breasts. "Dang! What happened then? My mind's a total blank!"

"We've noticed," Asuka quipped, earning a snort and a giggle from Rei. "Anyway, it doesn't really matter. What do you want, anyway?"

"Oh, don't worry about it! Junko-chan texted me that we're going to go meet up with the others, so I should go find her," Minako said brightly, patting down her blouse as she walked into the elevator on the other side of the room.

Rei winced. "H-Hey, wait! What did you mean earlier about Ranma and Usagi?"

"I said don't worry about it," the blonde repeated, rolling her eyes. "If you really want all the little details, you can watch the sex tape later. Ciao!"

Rei and Asuka gaped as the elevator doors closed behind Minako, cutting her off from the many questions they had about this new endeavor.

"S-Sex?" Rei mumbled weakly.

"Tape?" Asuka followed, her eyebrow twitching.

The vampiress immediately rounded on her. "Asuka-chan! We've got to do something! We have to stop them!"

"Call me Captain," Asuka mumbled uselessly. "And while I very much disapprove of voyeurism, there's not too much I can-"

"Voyeurism shmoyeruism! They're planning to hook up Ranma and Usagi!" Rei shouted, shaking the smaller woman's shoulder.

"So I've heard. And why should I care about that over actual criminal activity?" the police captain asked, though she knew the answer would just annoy her.

"You fool! Don't you know it's dangerous to allow that sort of conduct between members of a fighting force?" Rei said hotly.

"As dangerous as letting a member feed off another member for sustenance?" Asuka deadpanned.

"Are you STILL on about that?"

The police captain sighed wearily as she rubbed her forehead. "Look, Hino-san, I'll be honest, I don't like the idea of their meddling either, and I think that their efforts are just going to cause humiliation and regret. But not only do I lack the provincial authority to stop them... I lack the ability."

Rei looked confused, and Asuka continued. "It sounds strange, I know, but my officers have... unusual areas of competency. Just as Chikiko would never think she could beat me in hand-to-hand combat or chess, I have to admit that her ability to manipulate men and take advantage of them is so far advanced that I have no ability to counteract it. In addition, assuming Yamazaki is in on this, his skill and experience when it comes to peeping is second to none. I couldn't stop him if I tried."

Rei's teeth clenched, and her fangs seemed to grow longer as her frustration built. "So you're just going to-wait, you have a peeping tom for an officer?"

"You haven't noticed? He must be pretty careful around you, then," Asuka mumbled, wandering over to the vampiress' desk. "He got you these candles, right? With the skull holders?"

Without waiting for a reply, she reached into one of the skull's eye sockets and pulled out a tiny video camera. "I don't even know how he finds cameras this size. This stuff is more advanced than the surveillance equipment the department has access to!"

Rei blanched, reflexively covering her breasts despite the fact that she was clothed (more or less, as she was wearing her new DAPC outfit). "You mean he's been watching me change all this time?"

Asuka blinked. "You change your clothes?"

Rei stopped to think about that. "Oh. I guess I don't. Never mind." She didn't even have to bathe, either, since she could immolate her entire body to purify her skin without harming herself.

With that distraction over and forgotten, the vampiress moved back to the more important topic. "Anyway, if you're not going to stop them, then I will!" Rei declared, stomping past Asuka toward the elevator.

The blue-haired woman arched an eyebrow. "You're going out in the middle of the day?"

"I'll be fine!" Rei insisted as she got in the elevator. "I'm not going out to burn anybody - hopefully - so it's not like I'll need my powers!"

_Ding!_ Asuka said nothing as the doors closed, and she looked down at her watch as the elevator ascended.

Eight minutes later, the elevator descended once more.

_Ding!_ Rei stumbled out as soon as the doors opened, her eyes reduced to dizzy swirls and her skin pale.

"You didn't even last as long as I thought you might, but I assumed this would happen," Asuka said, crossing her arms.

"So... sleepy... can't... think straight," Rei mumbled as she lurched back to her coffin.

"The vampires we hunted before the Black Dawn were survivalists," the police captain explained, "they could stand a bit of sunlight because they HAD to be able to. Not everyone had a safe dwelling where not a single ray of sunshine could reach them." She shook her head. "You've been thoroughly sequestered away every day, so you're completely unused to the daylight. Did you really think you could walk around the streets without so much as a hat?"

"Ugh... so tired," Rei mumbled as she stepped into her sarcophagus and bed. "Sorry, I can't really appreciate brilliant leaps of logic right now, Asuka-chan."

"It's CAPTAIN!" Asuka shouted before she slammed the lid of the coffin down.

* * *

"Usagi-chan! Heyooo!" Minako cheered as she and Junko stepped out of the car, seeing Tiro, Kyle, and a rather dusty-looking Usagi sitting down at a cafe at the street corner.

"Mina-chan! Junko-chan! Hello!" the other blonde said happily, one arm waving as she held a strawberry shake with the other.

Tiro stood up wordlessly, and then approached the two approaching women with his hands in his pockets.

The moment he was out of earshot of Usagi, he whispered to the girls in front of him. "I've got the plans in place and the gear is waiting. Saotome?"

"Having lunch at a booth downtown," Junko said tersely, "I'll take you there. Mina-chan, you've got this end handled?"

Minako gave a thumbs up as she and Junko passed by Tiro going in the opposite direction. "Lock and road."

Junko sweatdropped, but nonetheless did a sudden one-eighty and joined Tiro on his way to the parked patrol car.

Minako continued approaching her target, idly running a hand through her hair as she approached. She didn't know why, but after recovering from the confusion of being in the sub-levels, she felt absolutely FABULOUS, like the feeling she had just after a complete all-day beauty spa treatment. Her hair was silky and smooth, and she had an extra spring in her step as she looked forward to rearranging her friend's romantic life according to her whims.

Usagi looked confused. "Wait, where are they going?"

Kyle scratched his head and shrugged. The way they had acted had reminded him of covert operatives on a mission, and he could have even sworn he had even heard them whispering to each other while they walked. But that was silly.

Minako took her seat across from Usagi and then steepled her fingers under her chin, her mouth curving into a lazy smirk. "So Usagi-chan, what would you say if I told you that Ranma-kun was grooming himself to take you out on the town tonight?"

The blond cyborg blinked, and then her face flushed a bit. "He is? R-Really?"

"Oh yes," Minako confirmed as a waiter walked behind her chair carrying a tray of fresh drinks. "Hold on a sec."

_Thunk!_ With a small, completely innocent-looking nudge of her chair Minako tripped the waiter, who gave a shout of surprise and dismay as the serving tray in his hands tumbled into the air.

With a graceful flourish that frankly left the two blond superhumans stunned, the senshi of love turned out of her seat and slapped a palm flat against the bottom of the serving tray before snapping it to the side with exactly the right level of force and spin to perfectly stabilize the various glass flutes and glasses that were threatening to fall over.

All save one fruit cocktail was saved from plummeting to the ground, and Minako calmly snatched it out of the air with her free hand before handing the tray back to the speechless waiter.

"Please put the cocktail on our bill, would you?" Minako asked as the young man numbly took his tray back. "Oh, and do try to be more careful, 'kay?" She winked playfully at the boy, who simply gaped and slowly nodded as he backed away from the woman in front of him.

As she sat back down and took a sip of her new cocktail, Minako eventually realized that Kyle and Usagi were staring dumbly at her. "What? I've always been good with my hands," she said teasingly with another wink.

Both of her current companions were too thick to pick up on the innuendo, so they simply shrugged at each other before trying to forget the bizarre display of dexterity.

"Anyway, where was I? I know you've still got this whole 'destiny' thing going on with Mamoru, but I think you should really give Ranma-kun a chance to strut his stuff, you know? Who knows, you might even get some tonight!"

Usagi's blush darkened considerably. "M-Mina-chan! You know our relationship isn't like that!"

"And why the hell isn't it?" the other blonde demanded between sips of her drink. "Ranma is totally your type! And we can all tell he likes you! What's the hold up?"

"But what if Mamo-chan finds out?" Usagi asked timidly, wringing her hands as a pair of robot arms sticking out of her shoulders mimicked the motions. "I don't know if it's a good idea to risk my engagement, you know?"

"Girl, when you've got a plate of grade-A choice tri-tip in front of you cooked and ready, what do you do to it?" Minako posed.

"Devour it without hesitation," Usagi said immediately, idly wiping the drool off her lips with her napkin.

Minako chuckled as she wagged a finger at her friend and leader. "The same thing goes with men. If you deny your appetite, what good does it do you? When you get your hands on a good piece of meat, you go for it!"

Usagi squirmed as she felt her embarrassment rising, and stared down into her lap as her face burned. "I just don't know... this seems to be going so fast, and I haven't-"

She was suddenly interrupted by a large, gentle hand clasping her shoulder, and Usagi turned and looked up into Kyle's eyes as the super-soldier looked down at her seriously.

"Usagi-chan, I know it might seem uncomfortable and intimidating," he began, his voice soft and understanding, "but if there's one thing I've learned growing up, it's that blind obedience is the best policy when your friends and co-workers pressure you to do something."

Usagi blink-blinked. "It is?"

"Oh, sure. They're way smarter than us, you know?" Kyle reasoned.

Usagi didn't need much more convincing than that. "All right, let's do this," she said as she turned back to Minako.

"Yes! Nice assist!" Minako cheered, giving the blond man a thumbs-up. Kyle simply shrugged in response.

"First, we've got to get you cleaned and dolled up," the senshi of love said as she shot to her feet, looking as excited as ever. "And that whole insta-clothes function you've got built in is nice, but it lacks a designer's touch, you know? We're going shopping!"

"What? But I'm still supposed to be on patrol!" Usagi protested.

An arched eyebrow greeted the complaint. "Were you on patrol up until now?"

As Usagi winced, Kyle shook his head. "See what I mean?" the blond man sighed, "It does no good to resist. They're way too good at this 'logic' thing."

Then he glanced at Minako himself. "So... is there anything you want me to do?"

"There sure is!" Minako chimed as she reached behind her, snatching their table's check out of the hands of a surprised waiter. "Take care of this, would you?" A flick of her fingers sent the scrap of paper flying over the tabletop, where it pinned itself against Kyle's chest armor. "Thanks! Bye!"

Kyle seemed disappointed at being abandoned, but shrugged it off as he considered the daily patrol duties that necessarily fell to him now that most of the DAPC was spending their day on Junko's master plan.

He reached down to take the bill off his chest, and frowned as he saw some sort of gummy substance that was adhering the paper to his armor. "Eh? What's this black stuff?"

* * *

Hotaru looked out over the expanse of sunny plains, a gentle breeze playing her hair as she watched the tall, golden grass swaying in the wind.

She had to admit, now that she could compress and shape her thoughts into a quasi-physical realm at will, the technique was incredibly useful and very relaxing. She had spent many hours in this sun-kissed realm now, organizing her thoughts.

Well, actually, it wasn't only her thoughts she had to organize.

Nal'Shek was a villain through and through, of this she now knew intimately, but in his final moments the Sith had shown some remorse in what he had done. Dispersing his spiritual form was probably the wisest thing to do when seized in the immaterial jaws of a thirsting daemon, but he had put the last of his power into pouring his power and knowledge into his student even as he himself was torn apart.

She supposed even that was hardly magnanimous of him; in his death throes, the idea of passing on the knowledge he had deliberately withheld from his student to try to preserve some small scrap of his existence through her was probably the only option left to him. Against the prospect of complete annihilation before being forgotten entirely, it was by far the better decision.

Hotaru just wished he hadn't chosen to do it by spraying his guts all over her.

Nonetheless, after sinking into a meditative state - blissfully disconnected from the Force this time - she had managed to sort through most of the information and memories she was now privy to, discarding old, useless data and the many Sith rituals that were too complex or horrific to wrap her head around. Her knowledge in the Force had expanded by decades, although the information was spotty in places. She imagined she could manage the most useful tricks, however. All she needed was a bit of practice.

She could admit easily enough that the sudden knowledge had changed her. Great epiphanies and new perspectives could do that to a person. Although she had no desire to walk the path of the Sith as her late master had, the wonder at her knew power and knowledge had excited feelings within her that she had assumed long dead because of her abusive childhood and the heavy burden of being a senshi of the Moon Kingdom. A sense of adventure, curiosity, and thirst for excitement tickled her thoughts where before they had been muffled by depression, caution, and her natural weakness.

"I'm almost done here," she said suddenly, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear as she gazed out at the empty plain. "This was all a terrible accident, and I don't think I'll ever be able to forget the awful things I've seen here..."

She stopped to gaze at the palm of her hand as she held it up. "But I've endured. I'm still alive, I'm still me, and I've become stronger through it all. Nal'Shek tried to take everything from me, but in the end, his power is mine, now."

She put her hand down and snapped up the light saber hanging from her waist, spinning it about within her fingers. "I'm almost done... there's just one more loose end that needs to be cut away. One more enemy that needs to disappear."

With deliberate slowness, Hotaru turned around, her eyes sweeping over the landscape before looking at a single figure sitting cross-legged atop a stone outcropping. "You."

Sailor Saturn gazed down at Hotaru with a disapproving frown, the Silence Glaive resting across her lap. "I'm an enemy now? Hmn."

"Perhaps 'enemy' isn't the right word," the young Sith admitted as her eyes dropped to the light saber, inspecting it. "But I really don't know what else to call you. Your existence has tormented me practically since the day I was born. You've taken my family from me-"

"Mistress Nine took your family from you," Saturn corrected, resting one cheek on her fist as she glared down at her host.

"And what was she after?" Hotaru demanded, her casual facade burning away in a burst of rage. "You think I wanted this? You think I'd ever want any of this? Being fought over, used, possessed, and sacrificed? Being turned into a weapon to fight a war for a nation that doesn't even exist in history books?"

Her hands shook as she gripped the light saber, her chest heaving with wrathful energy. "But I was never given a choice! Not by anyone! Not by you, or Nine, my father, or even Usagi! No, my first taste of freedom was chewed up in the jaws of a bloody **daemon** and spat out at me!"

Suddenly, her expression calmed considerably, and her stance loosened. "But even that... even that is better than living out this... 'destiny' you've drawn out for me. Even swimming in that ocean of raw power thick with predators is better than descending into the Silence again."

Sailor Saturn sighed wearily at the girl's anger as she stood up. "Hotaru, Nal'Shek's knowledge is corrupt. The appearance of the daemon should have shown you that. It has poisoned you to the point that you've lost all perspective. Was it not I that saved you from the Sith's plans?"

"A little, yes," Hotaru admitted, "though as much for your own sake as mine. Like he said: you're both spirits of dead warriors vying for control of my body."

The ancient princess snorted. "You trust the words of the man that betrayed and tried to possess you?"

"Just because he was a backstabbing creep doesn't mean he isn't right," Hotaru countered.

Saturn shook her head. "And what of the others? Your friends? Will you abandon them too?"

Hotaru raised an eyebrow, and her mouth twisted into a small smirk. "Abandon my friends? Why would I do that? You think I need you to be with Usagi-chan, Haruka-papa, or Michiru-mama? Do you really think that YOU, my cold, planet-rending alter ego, are really the focal point of my entire life?"

The young Sith seemed to think her own question over after she had asked it. "Well... maybe you are. That's kind of the problem, really."

"You think the others will accept you so easily when you turn your back on your duties as a Senshi?" Saturn demanded.

"If they don't then they're not very good friends in the first place, are they?" Hotaru sneered, clearly annoyed.

"Together, with my power, we have saved this world from destruction again and again," Saturn started to say, only be cut off.

"And now that all that's over - as Setsuna-mama said it is - I'm taking my life into my own hands," Hotaru snapped. "If you have any **good** reasons why I shouldn't obliterate you, then you'd best hurry up and get to them, Saturn. Your guilt trips aren't working and I'm getting tired of looking up your skirt."

The senshi of destruction didn't react verbally to the jibe, although she did hold her glaive close against her leg to keep the purple sailor skirt from moving in the wind. "You would throw away everything that we have achieved? The future of our world? For what? Your petty desires and meaningless pleasures? You would risk everything you have known for some feeble illusion of 'choice'?"

"You really don't get it, do you? Of course you don't. Miss hard-wired, brain-dead planet killer would never understand the concerns of an actual person. You see everything in terms of enemy and ally. Duty and law. You're barely even a complete soul; just a weapon doing its best to kill what its masters want."

_Pshew! Vwom!_ With a snap of her wrist the violet light saber activated, and Hotaru's eyes narrowed as she stared up at the woman whose existence had for so long shadowed her own. "I'm sick of having YOUR past and future dictate my present! I'm tired of being used! From now on, Hotaru Tomoe makes her own decisions and builds her own future!"

Sailor Saturn's eyes were sad as she moved into a combat stance, staring down at her host with pity in her gaze. "Don't do this, Hotaru. You can still turn away from this path. Leave this place at once, return to the other Senshi, and forget this wretched place. This conflict will gain you nothing. You cannot simply **decide** not to be a senshi of the Moon Kingdom."

"And that, Saturn-san," Hotaru growled, "is why you have to die."

The first attack was Hotaru's, just as she had hoped. Taking loose control of the air around her light saber, she hurled it at the senshi of Saturn like a boomerang before thrusting a palm sharply upward.

A slight trembling was all the warning Sailor Saturn had before the boulder she was on suddenly burst from the ground, trying to catapult her into the path of the ancient weapon.

Saturn jumped quickly enough to use the extra boost to simply somersault over the light saber, and the Silence Glaive curved down in a vicious arc just moments after Hotaru leapt backward out of range.

The senshi slowly stood up straight, obviously feeling no pressure to stay on the attack. "The treacherous Sith's words still haunt you, even after his death. Even this plane, this little... arena, is the fruits of his black knowledge, isn't it?"

The senshi of destruction calmly sidestepped as the light saber spun back to its owner, the Force weapon sizzling as it burned the tips off the high grass in its path.

"I can sense everything you've done here, Hotaru. You've forced both our consciousnesses into this space in order to force me to face you on your terms. Confining spiritual energy and mental patterns to forms of vulnerable flesh in order to more easily subdue it... exactly as Nal'Shek did to you."

Hotaru snapped her light saber out of the air and then leapt to the side, her jumps taking her almost a dozen meters with each bound. "Except there are no daemons here to stop me from finishing YOU!"

She punctuated the last word by dashing toward Saturn, her body blurring as she closed the distance between them far faster than it was possible for any normal human to tracks.

_Bzssht!_ Sailor Saturn was far from a normal human, and she parried the first slash with the butt of her glaive before whipping the bladed head around to slash at Hotaru's shoulder.

Hotaru took a shallow slash as she turned away from the attack, and spun once before bringing down her light saber in a vertical slash.

_PSSSHT! GZSHT!_ Saturn caught the beam on the haft of her glaive, and the two nearly identical women locked gazes as sparks flew from their weapons.

"I'm afraid your confidence is misplaced, Hotaru," Sailor Saturn said matter-of-factly before she shoved her arms upward, throwing Hotaru backward and breaking the deadlock, "while you've absorbed an unfortunate amount of Nal'Shek's venomous knowledge, you've gained none of his wisdom. There was a reason he chose to challenge us so close to the veil between our mind and that nightmare realm known as the Warp, and he would have still done so even had he fully understood the risks.

Hotaru blinked as she circled her opponent warily. "The 'Warp'? You have a name for it? You know what the Force **is**?" She groaned. "Dammit. Even the voices in my head are hiding things from me."

Sailor Saturn ignored her host's grumbling. "In that place, my power was badly subdued, for to unleash the Silence so close to the fabric of the Immaterium... well, if we were lucky, I would merely have summoned a much more terrible daemon than the paltry scavenger that managed to crawl its way out of your belly."

Hotaru suddenly thrust her free hand forward with her fingers spread, and arcs of purple lightning lashed out at the senshi of destruction like violet whips.

Sailor Saturn couldn't help but smirk as the bolts splashed harmlessly against the Silence Wall, her expression in stark contrast to Hotaru's shocked expression. "Here, in the tranquility and limitless expanses of your mind... I have no such limitations."

And with that, Saturn jabbed the Silence Glaive in Hotaru's direction.

The explosion was perfectly soundless, so the first sensation Hotaru actually received from the explosion behind her was a tremendous wave of force knocking her clean off her feet. She managed to turn off the light saber almost immediately as she left the ground, which was good since she probably would have accidentally amputated a limb otherwise when she tumbled to the ground in a heap several meters away, completely stunned.

"I... made sure to..." the young Sith mumbled to herself with wide eyes as she dizzily pushed herself off the ground, one hand still holding on to her light saber tightly, "how did you..."

"You thought you had cut me off from the Silence?" Sailor Saturn asked as she walked over to the trembling girl, lazily spinning the Silence Glaive about in one hand. "Of course you thought so. In theory, this is a realm created by your own mind: nature doesn't really set the rules, you do. You can change the landscape to anything you wish, negate gravity, create imaginary soldiers to help you, suppress an enemy mind's power, or make yourself invulnerable."

The senshi of destruction continued her lecture calmly even as Hotaru finished getting up and scrambled away from her foe in fear. "That's all in theory, though. In practice, your ability to tilt the playing field is limited by the power of the soul you seek to oppose and the level of concentration and control you can muster over an entire demiplane." She suddenly leveled the Silence Glaive at Hotaru, and the ancient spirit's eyes narrowed. "However, I am woven into every fiber of your being, Hotaru. Your body is mine as much as it is yours. In this realm WE created, you are as vulnerable as I, and far more powerless. I'm afraid you hold a severe disadvantage here."

Hotaru's eyes hardened as the spirit's words fell into place. "You realize, of course, that this sort of thing is the reason why I hate you so much in the first place."

Saturn shrugged. "I care nothing for your approval, but this pointless resistance must end. No matter how you feel about me or your destiny, you cannot stop either. Surrender this foolish effort."

_Vwom!_ The light saber extended once more, and Hotaru burst forward onto the attack, drawing more of the Force to her to speed up her body as she ran.

_Bzsht! Ksht! Kzat!_ The young Sith closed to melee range in an instant, and even Sailor Saturn seemed to struggle to keep up as the glowing energy blade furiously battered the senshi's defenses.

_Gzrt!_ Hotaru slashed heavily against the blade of the Silence Glaive to knock away the dangerous end of the weapon, and as she raised the light saber over her shoulder for a double-handed swing,

_Click!_ With a twist of her hands, the light sabers blade suddenly doubled in length, and Hotaru cried out savagely as she turned into a low slash that suddenly had more than enough reach to take off her opponent's ankles.

_Ksssht!_ Saturn slammed the butt of the Silence Glaive into the ground to stop the attack, but it had come too fast for her to block completely. Sparks flew and lightning danced along the edge of Hotaru's weapon as the glowing purple blade burned through the enchanted armor of Saturn's sailor suit, eating through the boots, flesh, and bone with equal gusto before completely severing the senshi's left foot and skidding to a stop against the haft of the Silence Glaive.

Hotaru experienced a brief moment of exultant triumph before a massive shock wave blasted outward from the senshi of destruction, blowing her off her feet once again and flinging her backward through the air.

She was more or less expecting such things now, however, and called the Force to her as she righted herself to land heavily on her feet.

Saturn stared down impassively at her dismembered foot as dark smoke poured from the charred flesh of the cut. Then she shifted her weight entirely to her right leg as she turned her attentions back to Hotaru. "Are you satisfied now?"

"No, not really," Hotaru admitted, twisting the light saber again to bring it back to its more versatile longsword length. "I was hoping for you to fall down, or stagger, or... show some mild discomfort, at least."

Saturn snorted and once again pointed her glaive. "Silence Glaive Surprise."

Hotaru was thrown to the side as a considerable chunk of her dream-prairie was suddenly consumed in bright light, her body being thrown along the shock wave and tumbling into the tall, billowing grass.

Sailor Saturn spent a few seconds staring at the crater caused by the technique, the concave impact zone measuring nearly the width of a city block. And yet the only sound that disturbed the calm wind was the noise of chunks of exploded dirt raining softly onto the grass.

_Vwom! Jhooooh..._

Well, okay, maybe that wasn't the ONLY sound.

Saturn spun around with surprising swiftness considering that she had only one leg to stand on, and a quick gesture with the Silence Glaive caused a massive geyser of searing purple energy to erupt out of the ground directly in front of Hotaru, who had been dashing for Saturn's unprotected back.

Seeing that her surprise attack had been ruined, Hotaru clicked her tongue as she leapt away from her assault path, and then thrust her free hand forward to send several large rocks uprooted by the explosions hurling toward her enemy.

Saturn casually gestured toward the rocks with her own hand, not bothering to call out the name of her technique as the boulders smashed themselves to pieces against the Silence Wall. "That weapon is quite obnoxious, you know. You won't be able to sneak up on anyone with all that infernal humming."

Hotaru growled as she slammed a palm into the ground, and the earth beneath her feet trembled before a line of small explosions started going off in Saturn's direction, sawing across the dirt and throwing up waves of dust and shredded grass.

The new attack didn't stop when it reached the Silence Wall, the next explosion simply bursting up from the other side, and it almost looked like the ground wave was going to score a hit before Saturn slammed the butt of the Silence Glaive into the dirt once more.

Hotaru covered her face with her arm as another massive shock wave burst out from all around the senshi, and when she could once again see her enemy, she saw that her own puny assault had been completely snuffed out.

"Give up, Hotaru!" Sailor Saturn demanded wearily. "This conflict is pointless. I don't want to destroy you."

"And that's why you'll lose!" Hotaru declared as she took off into a frontal assault again, light saber held out at her side.

Saturn lifted the Silence Glaive up, and then, after pausing for dramatic effect, brought it down once again.

Hotaru's momentum halted almost instantly as another shock wave blasted into her, as she felt her rough, time-worn shoes digging into the dirt as she was pushed backward.

"The differences in our power is simply too great for you to overcome," Saturn said condescendingly, like a teacher lecturing a dim student. "I have the Silence at my command, and your mastery of this... 'Force' is nascent. I cannot lose."

"If you don't care about winning, you'll definitely lose!" Hotaru insisted through clenched teeth as her eyes glanced back and forth, searching for any possible weapon for her to use. "If the outcome doesn't really matter to you, if you don't have any passion for what you're fighting for, you can't possibly succeed! You don't really care about controlling me or securing the future of the Moon Kingdom! You're only doing this because of your orders and Serenity's goals! You won't beat me!"

Saturn sighed sadly as she shook her head. "Nal'Shek's dark thoughts become more pointless and deranged the further you delve into it."

"I didn't get that tidbit from Master," Hotaru corrected as she held her light saber upright in front of her, "I learned that from Ranma Saotome."

_BWOOM!_ An explosion of power not dissimilar from Saturn's earlier displays burst from around Hotaru's body, and the very earth started to tremble as the Force poured from the young Sith in waves, digging into the ground like mighty roots.

The noise rose further as rocks started to lift up off the ground, at first small stones, but then larger and larger rocks began to dig themselves from the earth until the point that car-sized boulders were tearing themselves free from the ground in small explosions of dirt and shredded grass.

Sweat beaded across Hotaru's forehead as she drew more and more of the Force to her, and she knew that in summoning this much power she risked attracting the attention of wandering daemons thirsty for souls. It was the very mistake that had led to Nal'Shek's death, although her late master apparently hadn't been aware of the danger.

Still, seeing the look of mild concern on Sailor Saturn's face had already made the gambit worth it.

"Apocalypse Drive!" Hotaru shouted as she cut down with her light saber

At that momentous gesture, the stones suddenly rocketed forward before descending on Sailor Saturn in a massive barrage.

At first Saturn moved to launch an attack to knock out Hotaru and hopefully take out most of the incoming projectiles in a single shot, but a moment of hesitation saved her from that mistake when she noted that the ground was still shaking and that boulders were still tearing themselves from the earth all around her before arcing at her like homing missiles.

"Silence Dome Enclose!" the ancient warrior shouted, summoning a barrier just in time for the first wave of stones to pulverize themselves against the shield.

Saturn had to admit that she wasn't expecting this level of power or creativity from her foe, and she watched with considerable interest as the stones continued hammering the silence dome. The smaller rocks disintegrated from the combination of kinetic force and energy feedback, often bursting into hot dust on impact, but the boulders would instead break into smaller rocks which would bounce away and then double back toward their target, continuing to attack until they had been reduced to powder.

Even the inside of the silence dome wasn't completely safe, and as the ground bucked and heaved beneath her feet (or foot, rather), rocks would leap up from within her shield and pelt her. Not that these were little more than an irritation; there weren't many that broke the surface so close, and any stone large enough to cause damage was swatted out of the air before it got too close. However, it was still surprising and slightly worrying to see that Hotaru's last-ditch effort had partially circumvented her strongest defense.

It was also interesting to note that an attack such as this wasn't among Nal'Shek's memories; Hotaru had created it herself with imagination, raw power, and a great deal of inspiration from Saturn's own powers.

The senshi's musings ended when Hotaru came dashing toward the circumference of the barrier, probably desperate to launch a new attack as her most recent one finally started losing steam; the tremors had abated and the vast majority of stone projectiles had already shattered.

Saturn watched impassively as Hotaru slammed a palm against the silence dome, and she very nearly dropped her glaive in surprise as the dome promptly unwove itself before the young Sith, a gap yawning open widely enough for her to jump through before sprinting into a headlong charge.

_GZZZssssht!_ Saturn caught the light saber slash against the haft of the Silence Glaive, and her eyes locked with Hotaru's as the girl tried to overpower her.

"Impressive..." mumbled the senshi of destruction as she shoved the crackling weapon away, making no move to attack. "Most impressive."

_Bzrt! Choot! Kzshzt!_ Hotaru attacked in wild flurry, her strokes and slashed raining like lightning upon the ancient warrior. Saturn's defenses proved up to the task, however, and every blazing strike was parried with a clap of electric thunder and a burst of hot sparks.

"Your grasp of the Silence is much better than I thought if you can unravel it so easily," Sailor Saturn complimented before deflecting another light saber strike at a calculated angle, throwing Hotaru off-balance as she swatted the light saber blade to the side. "You truly were born to wield my power, Hotaru."

"You don't get to decide that!" Hotaru howled, twisting the light saber again and extending the blade with a crackle of azure lightning. "Shut up and die already!" Hot anger seemed to fill every vein in her body with fresh vigor, and her form burned with a violet aura as she surged forward with thrice the power behind her blows.

_GSHZT! GAZOOHT! KASHT!_ Blow after sweeping blow hammered into the Silence Glaive, the extended length of the light saber edge and the improved leverage forcing Sailor Saturn to brace herself strong against every blow and catch the attacks perfectly, lest her pole arm be knocked right out of her hands. Yet, still she did not fall, and Hotaru's strength started to wane as she tried to press her assault.

Hotaru knew that her attack was faltering; Saturn's defenses seemed to be perfect, and Hotaru had taxed her body too heavily and too quickly in her desperate bid for the upper hand. The best she could hope for was a lucky hit, or that Saturn would finally stumble from having to defend herself on one foot...

With a gasp of surprise Hotaru glanced down at her opponent's feet, only now realizing that her foe had been bracing herself on both legs when one should have been reduced to an unusable stump. Much to her dismay, she saw that where the blackened flesh ended, a glowing purple mass had spontaneously grown into a shape similar enough to a foot to serve the senshi's needs, allowing the ancient warrior the proper balance to defend herself.

This distraction cost her dearly, however, and the moment Saturn saw that her opponent's eyes were not on her weapon, she batted the light saber away before cutting back across Hotaru's body, scoring a deep cut right under her breasts.

Before the young Sith could so much as gasp from having her lungs sliced open, Saturn rotated the pole arm over her head to swing the other end around into the girl's jaw, scoring two clean blows on a single rotation of her weapon. Hotaru promptly staggered away, her light saber deactivating as an ugly fan of blood gushed from her chest wound.

"It's over Hotaru," Saturn said with finality, approaching her wounded foe steadily. "Surrender now and dissipate this place, and all will be forgiven. Depart from this foolish path, and take up the mantle you were always meant to bear: that of the senshi of destruction and silence."

Hotaru gasped painfully as she held her free arm tightly around her ruptured torso, gobs of blood sputtering from her lips with every breath. "No... f-fair... your foot... already... cut it off..."

Sailor Saturn rolled her eyes. "I will take that as a 'no'. Very well."

_Bwoom!_ With a gesture, another explosion took Hotaru clean off her feet, and the young Sith screamed as she was sent flailing into one of the few patches of tall grass that hadn't been obliterated by the battle.

Sailor Saturn felt Hotaru's mental grip on their environment weaken as she neared unconsciousness, though thankfully the girl would not die. Although she had been severely wounded, a soul's own will to survive would fight against the rules of the mental plane enough to ensure that one didn't die from bleeding out or suffocation. So long as Hotaru stayed down this time, she would survive.

This was rather important to Saturn, not because she particularly cared about Hotaru, but because having to inhabit the girl's body full-time would have been a fantastic inconvenience. Besides trying to get along in the somewhat normal life that Hotaru led most days, the destruction of Hotaru's soul probably would have caused some friction among her friends and parents among the Senshi, and frankly Saturn had enough issues with the whole "trust" thing as it were.

Putting aside Hotaru's fate for the moment, Sailor Saturn focused her concentration on the demiplane that Hotaru had created, forcing her will upon the landscape in ways that had been impossible with Hotaru's mind firmly trying to control the place.

Bits of broken rock and dust started to rise up and coalesce into spheres that floated in the air, and Saturn watched with a deliberate eye as the orbs slowly turned to balls of glass one by one. Each sphere glowed with an unearthly light as it spun lazily in the air, and blurry images seemed to move within each one, like a movie projection with exceptionally bad focus.

"I'm not certain if you can hear me now, Hotaru, but I'll inform you nonetheless," Sailor Saturn said as she kept willing the spheres into existence all around her, the orbs now numbering almost a hundred and still growing in number. "Unwanted souls and rampaging daemons aren't the only thing that can be summoned and then destroyed in this demiplane we've forged. Behold, your memories."

She walked closer to one of the orbs, peering closer until she could see the image of Hotaru doing various exercises in a pointless Rocky Balboa training montage.

"Not all of them, of course. Such a vast store of information is beyond my ability to summon into this place, and most are irrelevant anyway. No, these are your memories of your time in that wretched fortress with Nal'Shek, as well as the scraps of memories that he managed to pass on to you."

Saturn slashed the orb she was standing in front of with a negligent flick of the Silence Glaive, and as it split in two the sphere seemed to melt into sand, eventually falling to the ground to kick up a puff of dust.

"Since you've developed something of a stubborn streak over the past... oh, I think it's been about four hours now since you first started meditating... you leave me no choice." Saturn slashed apart another crystal, and then another, her glaive flicking to either side as she walked. "If you will not turn away from Nal'Shek's teachings, I will simply destroy them."

After seeing nearly a dozen more spheres reduced to bits of shimmering debris, Saturn moved up to another orb, this one showing Nal'Shek in his living days dueling with the light saber, and raised her glaive to destroy the memory that sustained Hotaru's skill at light saber combat.

_Pshew! Vwom!_

Saturn's eyes twitched as she heard the familiar sound of a light saber activating, and she turned her head to stare coldly into the patch of tall grass being bathed in bright purple light from within.

"I have shown you leniency again and again, Hotaru. Cease this resistance at once," Sailor Saturn demanded, her voice icy. "I spare your existence only because your feeble struggles are less of an inconvenience than the myriad difficulties of replacing you. Don't think that will stay my hand for much longer. You are becoming QUITE the nuisance."

The soft hum of the light saber was all that greeted her threats, and Saturn turned completely around to face her fallen foe.

"Hotaru?" the senshi of destruction frowned. "Did you get up, or did that thing somehow turn on by itself?"

_Bwack!_ For the first time in untold millennia, an expression of complete and utter shock adorned Sailor Saturn's face as a kick from behind sent the Silence Glaive spinning away through the air.

Saturn whirled around just in time for Hotaru's knuckles to smash into her nose, sending the ancient spirit staggering back in pain and surprise.

"You were right!" Hotaru said through bloodied teeth as she launched a kick into Saturn's midsection, knocking her down onto her rear. "That thing really is noisy! Completely obscured my sneaking up on you!"

Saturn coughed as she scrambled to her feet, dizzy and a bit bloody but not seriously hurt. "How did you... that wound..."

The ancient spirit trailed off as she realized that Hotaru was still holding one arm under her breasts where she had been cut, and that said arm was glowing as the savage wound slowly regenerated.

"Healing is my oldest trick, Saturn," Hotaru spat, "and that's nothing I learned from the Silence."

"H-Hotaru... stop this," Sailor Saturn said, traces of nervousness creeping into her voice. She wasn't completely powerless without her weapon, and Hotaru was still unarmed and wounded, but the sheer, almost tangible hatred coming from the young Sith sent tendrils of fear creeping into her normally emotionless facade.

"NO, I will not stop," Hotaru hissed as she advanced. "I will not stop until you're dead and gone. I will not stop until my mind, body, and memories are safe from you. I will not stop until I'm FREE of the damn leash you and Serenity have wrapped around my throat! This is it, Saturn! Prepare for oblivion!"

The senshi of destruction bolted, pouring energy into her speed as she dashed in the direction of the Silence Glaive. "You're making a mistake, Hotaru! What will become of the future if the princess lacks the power of Saturn?"

"I'll tell you all about it when I see you in Hell!" Hotaru snarled, not bothering to chase her opponent. Instead she merely raised a hand toward the senshi's back. "Goodbye, Saturn."

_Vwom! Hsssh!_ Saturn was first confused when she first heard the constant hum of the light saber mixed with an infernal sizzling noise, but comprehension came a moment too late as she saw the ancient weapon rising into the air in front of her, its crackling violet blade cutting and burning the surrounding grass as it hovered.

The senshi of destruction had no time to dodge and no weapon to block as the light saber lanced toward her, its five-foot blade instantly piercing her Senshi armor right through the crystal over her breast before burning through her ribcage, heart, and spine and then bursting out her back.

Hotaru breathed heavily as Saturn stumbled onto her knees, the senshi's body all but destroyed. Partially her exhaustion was from her injuries, much of it could be attributed to adrenaline, but the rest was pure emotion as fear, hope, and rage gave way to victorious pride.

"And that, Saturn-san, is something else I learned from Ranma," the young Sith said as she walked up to her defeated opponent. "An opponent is most vulnerable when they think they've already won. If you can't win from the front, hit them in the back."

Reaching Saturn's dying body, Hotaru grabbed the handle of her light saber.

_Fzash!_ With an almost casual motion, she sliced the weapon upward, and Sailor Saturn exploded into motes of light as her spirit, the last remnants of a soul thousands upon thousands of years old, at last fled the body of Hotaru Tomoe.

The lights coalesced in the air to become a small jewel, and Hotaru caught it out of the air.

"So this is a star seed, huh?" Hotaru asked nobody, finally deactivating her light saber and clipping it onto her belt. "I thought it'd be shinier." It rather resembled a finely cut gemstone with a dark purple coloring, and the interior swirled about chaotically as if a tiny storm were trapped within.

"Inside this rock is all of Saturn's power. The access to the Silence Glaive, my senshi form, and the essence of the Silence itself," she mumbled, idly wiping away some of the flakes of dried blood that had gathered around her mouth.

And then, with a smirk on her face, she shattered the crystal in her hand, grinding it into little fragments.

"Heh. And now it's all gone," she said in self-satisfaction, watching her hand as the bits of broken star seed started to glow. "Finally, the nightmare is... uh..."

She trailed off as the fragments glowed brighter and brighter, the silvery light eventually swallowing her hand and showing no signs of abating.

"Okay, maybe it was a mistake to just smash something with that much power," Hotaru admitted nervously as the glow kept blooming brighter, filling up ever more of her vision even as she looked away from the energy quickly swallowing her. "Okay, let's calm down... I can handle this.. maybe I can just-OH GOD WHY?" she screamed as the light finally consumed her.

* * *

Far away from the cataclysmic events taking place in Hotaru's mind, Ranma was groaning in irritation as Tiro and Junko circled his body like predators armed with measuring tape and armfuls of shirts.

He was currently in the dressing room of some French clothing store with a name he couldn't pronounce and was hating every minute of it. Tiro and Junko had been quite insistent that they dress him up properly if he was going to go take Usagi out on a date, and after another fruitless argument with Junko, he had ended up agreeing.

His only consolation was that he had forced them to agree to a deal: that if he could select a pair of pants for his new outfit that would be accepted without complaint or discussion, he would suffer through having the rest of the ensemble painstakingly assembled by the DAPC's most lecherous officers.

Of course, he didn't make the deal because he had any particular pants in mind, but rather because he didn't trust Junko to be constantly undressing him from the waist down.

"All right, I think we've settled on wool for the outerwear, but what about a shirt?" Junko mumbled as she snapped a few picture's of Ranma's shirtless torso with her cell phone camera. "I can't decide between the gray with stripes or something with a little more color to offset the pants."

"I've got it covered," Tiro said as he practically threw the shirt onto Ranma's back. "Sky blue. Always a winner. Try it on, buddy!"

Ranma sighed as he did as instructed, buttoning up the shirt as Junko fetched a coat in his size from the pile in the corner. "By the way, I've been meaning to ask, why do so many of these shirts have wires in them?" He tugged at the cord through the fabric to emphasize its presence, which was otherwise not noticeable from the outside.

"It's just the fashion," Tiro said as he started adjusting the martial artist's collar. "There we go... and here's another VITAL accessory to the 'classy casual' look!"

Ranma frowned as he looked down at the button that Tiro had just put onto his collar. "It looks like a little microphone or something."

"I know, right? Trust me, it looks great," Tiro insisted while Junko nodded emphatically.

"This is all just so much trouble," the pigtailed man groused. "Why do I have to dress like some guy from a magazine? Can't I just be myself?"

"No man ever got laid by being himself," Junko declared as she helped him into a black wool coat. "Now hold still."

"I just think that if Usagi-chan would bother to go out with me in the first-" Ranma's eyes widened, and he and Junko stumbled for a moment as if physically hit by something.

"Whoa! Did anyone else feel that?" Ranma asked, holding his head suddenly.

Tiro raised an eyebrow. "No. What happened?"

"I don't know... it just felt like... a massive burst of ki or something," Ranma babbled, realizing that the explanation hardly made sense even to him. But it had come and gone so fast that he hadn't even had time to react.

"Uh huh. Sure," Tiro said, "trying to distract me so that you can go invisible and escape, huh? Not happening."

"No, he's telling the truth," Junko mumbled, slowly stumbling away from Ranma as she stared up at the ceiling in awe. "It was like... a massive psychic balloon had suddenly been popped, and we got caught in the rush of air. A force that's been swallowing life for... longer than I can imagine has been destroyed."

Tiro was struck speechless as he stared at the redhead. "Really? That's... that's pretty deep, actually."

Junko nodded. "Yeah. Although Ranma DID use the opportunity to go invisible and escape."

Tiro's head whipped around, and the lecher groaned as he saw only empty air where the martial artist used to be. "Damn it, let me get the GPS out."

"Did you tag his shirt?" Junko asked, rapidly forgetting about the momentous psychic event that had happened mere seconds ago.

"Too obvious. I managed to get it in his pigtail. Ah ha! Signal locked! Shoe department!"

"Perfect! After we corner him we can pick up some nice oxfords for him!" Junko cheered. "Let's go!"

* * *

Manipulating the threads of unreality for fun and profit: a primer on the similarities and differences between the Warp and the Force.

"Hello everyone, and welcome to this special edition Millennium primer," said Nal'Shek as he floated before a long white board, a tiny light saber in his hands. "I know this is usually where we post the kill count, but there weren't that many deaths this chapter, and they were all important and dramatic enough that you hardly need an end-of-chapter tally to remember them all."

Nal'Shek activated his light saber-slash-pointer, and then started slashing rapidly across the white board with it. "We had a lot of fun today, didn't we? And we had plenty of surprises, too! Like that daemon eating me; lemme tell you, back in the day, Force-users didn't have to put up with that sort of thing!"

When he was done drawing on the board, there were multiple pictures of himself using variously sized energy blasts. The last energy blast was the largest, and behind that particular image of the ancient Sith was a monster rearing up to eat him.

"You see, when a psychic, a psyker, or a Sith draws upon the Warp - or the Force, 'cause they're the same damn thing - they risk drawing the attention of a daemon. Daemons are beings composed of pure Warp energy that have managed to coalesce into a type of crude sentience, and the vast, VAST majority of them are pointlessly nasty, soul-devouring monsters. When a person starts drawing in power from the Warp to power abilities, it's like sucking water from a pond full of fish; draw a little, and nothing happens. But if you start taking buckets at a time, then there's a good chance that you might accidentally catch a 'fish,' if you get my meaning."

The ghostly Sith started drawing again in some empty space. "Now you might be thinking: 'But Nal'Shek, why didn't the Sith Lords or Jedi of old ever cough up daemons if they were using the Warp?' Well, the obvious answer is that these are two different canon universes with different rules. But because the author is the finicky sort, we've come up with a sketchy and annoyingly convenient explanation."

"You see, Star Wars happens a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It makes sense that in the ancient past, and with the Warp's tenuous but existent relationship with real-space, that the 'Warp' in Jedi Land is different from the 'Warp' in the Milky Way. What with an unspecified but significant time span having passed, and being in a galaxy mostly populated by jerks - and by example please consider the Eldar - the Warp, a realm composed of emotional and spiritual energy, has naturally gotten a lot more riled up, and big chunks of it have decided that mortals taste like chicken."

Having finished his drawings, Nal'Shek revealed a picture of two Jedi and two Sith, one of each side by side. He pointed to the top two pictures, of which the Jedi was labeled "Safe" and the Sith was labeled "Angry". "Now please note the above two figures: the Jedi holds his emotions in and seeks control above all else. Because the Warp is stimulated by emotional energy, using it while maintaining an emotional void and being careful leaves one almost completely unaffected and unbothered by the energy. It's a 'safe' power, also known as the Light Side of the Force. The Sith, on the other hand, channels the Force using his emotions. This makes it stronger, but he suffers a lot of feedback since he keeps agitating the psychic energies with his own emotions. This can lead to a 'corrupting' effect of various degrees and outcomes, which has led to this usage being labeled the Dark Side of the Force."

He then pointed to the figures at the bottom. "In the Milky Way galaxy, consequences are a lot more dire." The Jedi's head was surrounded by flames and had the label "Head Explodes", and the Sith had devil horns and claws along with the label "Angry and Possessed". "The measured, careful approach to using the Force is still safer, but ultimately your survival depends mostly on not going crazy with the power levels. Don't use the Force Lightning when a light saber to the gut will do. If you're on the more passionate side, then you're either in big trouble, or you're golden. Daemons are often drawn to the emotions that birthed them, so a Sith might find a kindred spirit squeezed into his head that might form into a partnership that's merely excruciatingly painful and horrific rather than fatal. It's a shame I never got to chat up the worm that ate me this chapter; we might have hit it off."

Nal'Shek then pointed to another diagram which showed a Chaos star icon. "Besides that, most of the differences between Force-users and psykers are superficial. For example, in the Milky Way people often attach religion significance to such powers and ritualize it." He then pointed to another drawing of a chemical beaker and a light saber "In my galaxy, things tend to be more pragmatic. We call on the Force when it's useful, and tend to ignore it when it's not. Unless some dead guy's yelling in our ears about it, anyway."

The Sith Lord bowed and then waved his transparent hand. "Well, I hope you all learned something today, and if you didn't, don't worry! This is all a load of crap fandom anyway! Goodbye!"

End Chapter 13 


	14. No Plan Survives Contact

"I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself."  
- General Robert E. Lee

"Is THAT why I never get promoted?"  
- Ken "Snake" Yakata

Black Dragon Productions presents...  
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...  
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.  
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.  
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.

Other Notes: _Sounds_, _'dialogue within character's mind/computer'_, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium  
Chapter 14  
No Plan Survives Contact With Ranma's Love Life  
********************************************************************

Ranma had seen his share of bad ideas.

Actually, when he was given time and reason to think on the subject, he had seen far more than his share. He had also seen and usually been subjected to everybody else's share of bad ideas.

Oh, sure, he had his own moments: entering an Amazon tribe's local tournament, winning back unwanted fiancees that had "abandoned" him, and most of the time he had taken on the guise of a woman deliberately to fool someone, he had suffered calamitous consequences.

But however bad his own plans were, he was infinitely more concerned when one of his friends, rivals, or allies had a proposition for him. One might have assumed that this was because most of the people in his youth that might have come up with them either wanted him dead or as a husband, but this hadn't changed much after he had joined the DAPC, although at least he had met one person whose ideas seemed both to work and didn't end with him in the blast zone of high-yield explosives.

Ranma idly wondered what Asuka would think of his current predicament.

"You look AWESOME," Junko said, clasping her hands together as her eyes sparkled, "I'm serious. If you didn't already have a hot little 'borg waiting for you to sweep her off her feet, I'd be ALL over you."

Ranma looked in the mirror uncertainly. His hair, normally poorly-brushed and haphazard, had been geled down and combed over one eye, while his shoddy casual clothes had been replaced by a red collared shirt and black slacks, keeping his usual color scheme, if nothing else.

"It does suit him, doesn't it?" Tiro admitted, looking proud yet somehow defeated at the same time.

"Okay, fine. Can you hand me my belt?" Ranma asked, gesturing to the strap that held his ammunition, flashlight, and assorted other police gadgets and items.

Junko snorted and swatted the offending item away. "Nuh-uh. You're not wearing anything that tacky on your awesome super-hot cyborg date. You're wearing a normal belt."

"But what if I need to reload? Or contact headquarters? Or-" Ranma was cut off as Tiro spoke up.

"No. We'll have your weapons the entire time. Look, we'll be with you the whole time to intercept problems, so you just enjoy a normal, peaceful date without any kind of fighting or work," the lecher insisted, looking unusually sincere about the idea.

Ranma looked almost startled at the idea. "That... What's that even LIKE?" he asked, before something more important caught his attention, "wait, what do you mean you're going to be with us? Is this a double date?"

"No way, I'm not going to go out with Tiro!" Junko said with a laugh while Tiro's face darkened. "We'll be following you two the whole time to take care of any problems, make sure you don't wimp out on us, and of course keep track of any SEXY developments."

"So you'll be peeping on us," Ranma deadpanned.

"I liked the way I said it better," Junko retorted, "but so what?"

"We're doing this for your sake," Tiro insisted, clapping a hand on the taller man's shoulder, "because we want you to SUCCEED. We're a team, you know?"

"Succeed in what?" Ranma asked uncertainly.

"Sexytimes," Junko and Tiro said in stereo.

"You know, I never realized it before, but you two are really annoying when you work together," Ranma mused out loud.

"Oh, please. We can be way worse than this," Junko said, rolling her eyes, "check this out."

She stepped back with her fellow lecher, and the two grinned in a curiously rehearsed way.

Junko suddenly thrust a fist into the air as Tiro clapped a hand over his becep while flexing.

"It's Tiro..."

"And Junko's..."

"Operation: Banging Metal!" they said in tandem, leaning forward as if for a camera.

"LEAVING," Ranma snapped as he walked out of the fitting room.

* * *

"Well, THAT took forever," grumbled Hotaru as she staggered out of mountain cavern, covered in dust and her clothes torn and ragged, "if I'd known the cavern was so deep under the mountain I would have kept the star seed intact long enough to just teleport out of there." Her lightsaber swung loosely from a clip on her belt, occasionally slapping her thigh.

The young Sith glanced up the mountain, spotting buildings above the treeline. It had been some time and a great deal of traumatic mental shenanigans since she had first started climbing this mountain, but she still remembered that there was supposed to be a resort on top, which meant food, baths, and transportation. She dearly needed all three.

"The power to unmake reality at my fingertips, and I STILL can't find some clean water or summon a bucket of fried chicken," she said as she started climbing through the overgrowth, "ultimate power really is pretty useless as soon as you're no longer fighting witches and hellspawn."

Suddenly feeling an urge to prove herself wrong, her eyes picked out four large rocks sticking out of the side of the mountain, and she reached out a hand in their general direction.

One by one the rocks were wrenched from the earth, tearing free in small bursts of dirt and scraps of foliage to float in the air unsteadily.

With another hand gesture the rocks approached Hotaru and then arranged themselves in the air in front of her like the steps of a staircase, each one floating about the same distance from the mountain slope, but with its flattest surface facing upward.

With a pleased grunt of approval, Hotaru started to ascend the makeshift steps, and each time her feet would leave the rock she had been standing on, it would rapidly move underneath the others to take a new place at the top of the steps.

"Okay, so ultimate power is good for witches, hellspawn, and hiking. Still can't make chicken though," she said to herself.

As she continued climbing her mobile staircase, she had to marvel at how easy she found it. Whether stairs or wild mountainside, climbing was still quite an exertion, and she remembered a time when this level of effort would have brought her lungs very near their breaking point.

Yet here was Hotaru the Sith, descending stairs without even winding herself.

Despite her being hungry and thirsty, Hotaru felt better than she could ever recall outside of her Senshi form; her breath came easily, her heart rate was stable, and her muscles didn't ache from any exertion more intense than walking.

Was this what being a normal, healthy person was like? Being able to do things like climb stairs without being pushed to exhaustion? If so, she could get used to it, Silence powers be damned.

Her form had filled out somewhat in the hours since she had culled that cancerous legacy from her soul, as if the ancient magics had been holding back her natural growth since puberty and had finally been released, and her body was fighting to make up for lost time. Though she hadn't had a mirror to look at for weeks, her arms were now slightly more muscled than other girls her age, likely due to her brief training under Nal'Shek. Her hips had also filled out enough that she didn't actually need her belt anymore, though she didn't necessarily feel good about that.

Hotaru's moving staircase started to flatten out as she approached a tall, sturdy wooden fence built into the mountainside. She could also see wisps of steam rising up from behind it. A bath. Perfect.

Raising one of the stones higher with her mind, Hotaru jumped up on top of it before leaping over the fence, tucking her body into a ball as she spotted the steaming water.

"BANZAI!" she shouted, her face splitting into a grin as she landed in the water with a tremendous splash. Her heart pounded from the sudden excitement, and yet it didn't prompt any of the intense muscle pain or choking gasps that she had grown used to.

Bursting from the surface of the water, she sucked in air greedily as layers of dirt were rinsed off of her hair and face, and Hotaru raised her arms to start scrubbing her hair.

She halted when she noticed that she was not alone. This wasn't a total surprise, as she was always more or less aware of living things around her now, and had sensed other people in the water as she had jumped.

That the people were male, and quite naked, shouldn't have been much of a surprise either, but it was nonetheless.

Hotaru flushed a deep red as she walked through the water toward the entrance to the inn, very deliberately not making eye contact with any of the men who were gaping silently and covering their private parts.

"Stupid Force powers can't even tell the difference between a girl and a boy," the purple-haired girl grumbled as she stepped out of the water and made her way to the changing room, "I sure hope lightsabers are waterproof..."

She opened the door and stepped in quickly, ignoring the shout of surprise from the young man who had been in the midst of taking off his boxers.

"Don't mind me," Hotaru said, waving her hand briefly toward the boy as she stepped past him, "I didn't see that you're wearing Sailor Venus print briefs."

"Oh, thank Christ," he sighed in relief, quickly stripping off his underwear before stuffing them in a locker and heading into the bath.

Emerging from the changing room, and still sopping wet, Hotaru turned to the side and entered the women's changing area, deciding she might as well finish washing before heading out.

After entering the room she stripped off her torn and dirty clothes, looking at the threadbare articles in disgust. Besides the fact that they were damaged and filthy, none of them even fit her anymore thanks to her sudden magic-induced growth spurt. With a tired grunt, she tossed everything but her belt and the lightsaber attached to it in the trash.

She moved to put the belt in a locker, but hesitated as she passed by a mirror, finally catching sight of her full reflection.

Hotaru stopped to look herself over, meeting her image with a critical gaze. Her hips were wider, her shoulders broader, and her breasts fuller than before. Her legs had thickened and become more muscular while her hips had widened into feminine curves. Her face was flush and more rounded, and her hair seemed thicker as well as longer (it had been some time since she'd had it cut, after all).

She was still short, but now Hotaru looked like a short young woman rather than a malnourished pre-teen. Her entire body seemed to exude a vitality and strength that was completely new to her, and she couldn't help but smile at the changes.

She decided not to weigh herself on the scale next to the mirror, though. She wasn't that eager to see how much different she was in kilograms.

"Well, new powers, new strength, and a new body!" Hotaru mumbled to herself as she smiled into the mirror, "maybe this Force thing is all it's cracked up to be after all!"

It was then that she suddenly felt a horrific surge of energy coming from the bathing area, like a sudden boil bursting up through the surface of her Force-senses.

"Oh, for the love of..." Hotaru groaned as she vaguely recognized the feeling, and as she tossed her belt in the locker, she held up her lightsaber in her right hand. She was going to need it.

"I hope this didn't happen because I moved the rocks or something," Hotaru mumbled as she exited the changing room and entered the bathing area proper. "I'm serious, if I can't even shift a few pebbles with my mind without summoning fell horrors from Hell, I am going to be SO mad."

Many people would have been staring curiously at the girl mumbling such dark and bizarre things to herself and holding a large metal cylinder in one hand, but as Hotaru entered the bathing areas she noticed that all of the women who were presumably ordinary people just taking a bath were absolutely still, their bodies not unconscious yet still unmoving, as if they had been frozen in time. All except for a single girl near the back who was dumping a bucket of hot water over her shoulder-length brown hair.

Hotaru couldn't really say she was that surprised by now.

"Okay, lay it on me," Hotaru said with a sigh, "what's the story here? Dark Kingdom? Alien invader? Rebel from the future? Stop me if I get it right." It wasn't like her to approach an obvious threat so cynically, but the combination of recent stress and development of new abilities made her reluctant to be cautious. She had REALLY been looking forward to bathing and eating.

The brunette started scrubbing her hair, not looking directly at Hotaru. "Keep going."

Hotaru's eye twitched. "Okay... Descendant of Nal'Shek? Security system from the Moon Kingdom to hunt down traitors? Sith hunter? Warp daemon possessing a human?"

"Getting warmer," the strange girl said as she slid further into the water, her head craning up to stare at the sky.

Hotaru frowned. "Crazy daemon cultist?" she guessed, her Force senses reaching out to probe the girl.

She felt human, but was awash with the Force. And not merely the raw energies that Hotaru drew upon to float rocks about, but rather the corrupted, malevolent, willful Force energy that had so many times threatened to split her mind asunder and devour her essence. The girl's soul had... accepted it. Seized it. Fed upon it, even.

The girl's mouth broke into a smile that seemed slightly too big for her face. "Bingo! You win!"

Hotaru shuddered as she confirmed her growing suspicions. Unbidden, horrific images of her last encounter with a daemon crept into her conscious thoughts, and Hotaru had to double her mental defenses and calm herself to keep the bile from rising to her throat.

"All right, let these people go, now! Or I'll cut you up like the last Force witch that got in my way," Hotaru demanded, though even to herself the threat sounded curiously timid and empty. She had no idea why; she was armed and prepared for battle, while the other girl was lazing about in bathwater, not even keeping eye contact. Yet, there was some strange pressure that depressed Hotaru's confidence and made her keep glancing at the exit.

The girl suddenly laughed, and though her own voice was light and pleasant, like a ringing bell, it seemed like there were two or three other voices laughing along with her, their voices faded but barely audible in the background of her mirth. Those voices were rough, gutteral and disturbing, and they made Hotaru's skin crawl.

"You think you can fight me? The petty psyker has barely learned to crawl and suddenly you want to fly?" Her laughter trailed off into giggles. "My dear Hotaru-chan, I have no intention of snuffing you out so soon."

Hotaru took a step back, though she really wished she could be having this conversation in the hot spring itself. Her shivers weren't entirely due to the strange girl; it was a little cold, and she was still naked. "You know who I am?"

"I do now. One glance and your secrets are mine," she said with a smirk, "but that's pretty rude, when you don't even know my name, hm? I'm Yumika, Herald of Chaos."

And with that, Yumika dipped her bucket into the water and then splashed more hot water onto herself.

Hotaru started to massage her forehead. "Okay... so what? What do you want? Why did you do this?" Really, it was extremely irritating how Yumika put her senses on full alert without displaying any sort of aggression.

"What do I want? Mmm." Yumika frowned as she put down the bucket. "You are rather new to your powers, aren't you? You take one look at me and become blinded to everything else around you. Not good. If I was serious, you'd be dead by now."

Hotaru, alarmed by her words, shut the seething cauldron of hateful power that was Yumika out of her mind's eye, immediately spotting three other forms behind her, on the roof.

"Ah, you see the harpies? You should probably take care of them," Yumika said as she stepped out of the spring, walking toward the young Sith, "the people in this inn will return to their senses when the daemons are gone, none the wiser... Unless one of them are killed, of course. You'll have quite a lot of explaining to do, then!"

Yumika calmly walked past Hotaru, and the purple-haired girl raised the lightsaber slightly, thinking to just take the girls' head off and be done with her before turning her attention to the daemons.

As soon as it crossed her mind, however, the thought was abolished. Attack Yumika? That was ridiculous. She'd be annihilated in a moment, and all those in the inn would be slaughtered helplessly.

Yumika stepped past, and Hotaru craned her head to look at her new targets. They were hunched, humanoid creatures, covered in thick, ugly brown fur and boasting great feathered wings on their backs. Long claws curved from their fingers, and their teeth were needle-sharp, but otherwise they did not look particularly dangerous, lacking the disturbing, mutagenic features of the one she had fought in the mountain.

They were also clearly waiting for her to confront them. The first two leapt off the roof, their wings spreading and lifting them up thanks to the hot air currents from the spring.

Hotaru reached up to sieze one of them with the Force, but surprisingly found it much more difficult than she expected to move the creatures telekinetically, like she was trying to handle a thrashing fish while her hands were coated in oil.

The third one used her moment of distraction to dive straight toward her, its claws outstretched and its jaws wide open to rend its prey apart.

The third daemon was precisely the reason that Hotaru hadn't invested too much energy into attacking the first two, however. Her other hand, rather than activating the lightsaber, twitched in the direction of a loose water bucket, sending the wooden container up and smacking the diving harpy in the face, covering it.

The creature flailed about as it careened onto the ground, being unable to correct its course and equally unable to complete its attack.

_PSSSHT!_ As the harpy wrenched the bucket off its head, Hotaru finally activated her weapon and stabbed it down into the winged daemon, spearing it through before she ripped the laser blade upward with a snap of her wrist. The harpy seemed to come apart from the gash across its body, the creature screeching angrily as its life force seeped out into the air like a dark, noxious gas.

The other two harpies had circled around, seeming to be more wary of their enemy. That suited Hotaru just fine, since the creatures didn't seem to have anything in the way of ranged abilities.

She did.

_VZZZRT!_ Pointing a single finger into the air, a dark blue whip of electricity snaked into the air and struck one of the flying daemons, the crackling arc curling around it and causing the creature to convulse badly as its flight path turned into an uncontrolled dive.

It crashed into the spring with a splash, spraying water all over the still-frozen women but still doing nothing to snap them out of their reverie.

Hotaru took her lightsaber with both hands as the last harpy rose up and then dive-bombed her, dropping too quickly for her to pull something in the way or launch any kind of projectile to stop it.

It also ensured the daemon had no way to dodge.

_Vsash!_ Hotaru's lightsaber slashed upward, bisecting the harpy and sending the two halves of the daemon spinning away on either side. On her left arm the daemon's claws scratched against her hip purely by chance, drawing three thin lines of blood down her leg.

As the hunks of harpy bounced and rolled away, Hotaru quickly checked on the flesh wound, focusing her senses for any indication of unnatural poisons or any other lingering daemonic taint. Once she was satisfied that there was none, she swiped a hand over the cuts, healing them almost instantly.

"Huh. That it?" she asked alound, her lightsaber still humming noisily above the gentle sloshing of the steamy spring.

_Bloosh!_ The water suddenly burst upward as the earlier harpy, burnt and stunned but not destroyed, made a final attempt at Hotaru's life, and its scorched and twisted jaws distended horribly as they reached for her face.

_Thwack!_ Hotaru slugged the lowly daemon bare-fisted, not even deigning to use her lightsaber on it. It was sent sprawling across the ground next to the spring, and then smacked into a large stone lantern placed near the edge of the retaining wall.

Hotaru thrust out a palm, and then raised it, causing the lantern to rise unsteadily out of the ground and shift over the staggered harpy.

_CRUNCH!_ The daemon let out a pathetic squeal as it was ground flat beneath the heavy stone, and then it fell silent as its body began to vaporize, the feathers molting rapidly as flesh and bone disintegrated.

_Shooft!_ Hotaru deactivated her lightsaber, frowning at the wisps of brown smoke where the daemon used to be.

"Whoa, did anyone else feel that?"

Hotaru glanced about as the civilians were suddenly reawakened to the normal flow of time. All of them seemed dizzy from the experience, but unharmed.

"Oh no, I think I feel a migraine coming on," grumbled one older woman as she rubbed her forehead. Then she glanced to her side, and nearly jumped in surprise to see a purple-haired girl entering the spring, a decidedly displeased expression on her face and a strange-looking flashlight in her hand.

"Oh! Hi! I didn't see you come in!" she said.

"Yeah... You all seemed pretty distracted," Hotaru mumbled as she slid into the water, sighing as her tensed muscles loosened up.

"Hey... Did somebody move this lantern?"

Hotaru ignored the disoriented ladies, and a sullen expression crossed her face.

That fight had been easy. Too easy. WAY too easy. Like, "reasonably well-trained police could have handled it if they didn't freak out about fighting inhuman abominations" easy. Those harpies had been nothing like the vile creature that had clawed its way to reality from within her own mind, and Hotaru was pretty sure Yumika had known they wouldn't be more than a workout for her.

They hadn't been summoned as a threat, a test, or even an entertaining diversion. They had been an introduction.

'Who was that girl?' Hotaru thought, brooding silently as she slid further into the water up to her chin, 'Herald of Chaos? What's that supposed to mean? She must have known I was going to be here... What does she want?'

Yumika had wanted Hotaru to know about her, and that she was aligned with the dark, hateful energies that infected the Force. And apparently, nothing else. The people in the inn seemed to be unharmed, the daemons had been crushed, and what little damage she had suffered purely by chance had been healed already.

"Chaos..." Hotaru mumbled to herself as she reached for a bucket to wash her hair.

"Excuse me?"

Hotaru turned to the lady who had spoken to her earlier, waving off her concern. "It's nothing, don't mind me."

"All right, but..." the older lady chewed her lip nervously as she pointed to Hotaru's right hand, "is your flashlight going to be okay in the water?"

Hotaru sweatdropped as she glanced at her lightsaber, which was already dripping wet from the steam that had condensed on its surface.

"Yeah, probably," the purple-haired girl said before dumping the bucket over her head (though she was careful not douse the ancient weapon).

"Ah, do you really need a flashlight in here? It's barely the middle of the day," the helpful - though rather nosy - woman asked.

"It comes in handy," Hotaru mumbled as she scrubbed her hair with her free hand, "there are some nasty animals out here, you know. A good 'flashlight' can take care of them."

"Actually, I didn't know," the lady asked, "I've worked at this inn for almost five years, and I've never seen anything more dangerous than a raccoon."

Hotaru froze. "Wait. You're a hostess here?"

"Yes, that's why I was so surprised earlier," the older woman explained, "I never saw you enter the inn, and we don't have any more guests scheduled to arrive today."

Hotaru sat up straighter, intrigued, "So, then, if a guest wanted a meal, you could get it for them?"

"Yes, I would. Which family are you with?"

Hotaru ignored her question, leaning in closer, "And since you were completely stunned by the Herald's sorcery earlier, that means your willpower can't be all that impressive, right?"

The hostess was silent for several seconds. "Wait... What?"

* * *

"To think that you were the owner's niece!" the inn hostess said, wearing a pressed kimono as she started collecting dirty plates from the low table in the middle of the room.

Hotaru squatted before the table, greedily gulping down more tea. She hadn't experienced decent civilization in weeks, and she was sparing no effort to make up for lost time.

"_Gulp!_ Yeah, sorry you didn't get the message," Hotaru said as she waved a hand in the woman's general direction, "but it was supposed to be a surprise for my uncle."

"You mean your aunt," the hostess said as she stacked half a dozen trays atop each other to prepare to take them away.

"Yeah, sure, that. Could you bring me some onigiri to go, please?" Hotaru asked, making another wave of her hand.

"Oh, certainly! Poor thing, you must have been starved from your trip!" the hostess said as she glanced over the empty plates. Half a dozen in her hand, and the strange girl with a serious attachment to flashlights was already working on cleaning off the last three.

"Yeah, especially with all the life-and-death fighting and constant energy use," Hotaru mumbled before popping a piece of nigiri into her mouth.

"The what now?"

"I asked if you could make that two orders of onigiri," Hotaru lied, waving her hand once again.

"Sure thing, darling!"

After a few more minutes, Hotaru had polished off the last of her food, and the young Sith collapsed onto her back.

"So this is what it's like to eat until you're actually full," she said blissfully, "I don't think I've eaten that much food over an entire week before. Being healthy is awesome!"

As good as she felt now, she knew that she had serious matters to consider. Between the appearance of Yumika and the destruction of Sailor Saturn, she had a lot on her mind even putting aside that she had been missing for weeks without a word to her parents or friends.

'I hope everything's okay with them,' Hotaru thought, pulling the yukata she had "borrowed" from the inn tighter around herself, 'they should be okay, but they're probably really worried about me.'

Then she brightened. 'Well, I guess it doesn't really matter! As soon as the next bus to the train station gets here, I'll be on my way home! No point in worrying about it now!'

* * *

"AAAAAAAAAH!"

Asuka flinched as a horrified scream came from down the hall, and sharply turned away from her computer where she was writing up an analysis of Rei's biology.

"Was that Ami? Hunter! I told you to leave her alone!" the bluette snapped.

Hunter promptly nudged her leg from behind, reminding the police captain that he was resting right behind her.

"Oh, damn it, what now?" Asuka drew her sidearm and gestured toward the alien warbeast at her feet, and then she dashed down the hall toward the stairwell, where she had heard the scream.

Seeing no evidence of fighting or incursion, Asuka moved to one room with its door cracked open and pulled the door open the rest of the way, preparing herself for a whole range of scenarios.

Unfortunately, none of those scenarios included her cousin typing furiously at her computer, ashen-faced.

"Ami? What's wrong?" Asuka asked, lowering her pistol but not putting it away just yet.

"It's Hotaru!" the genius Senshi asked, her voice shaky and her heart pounding, "I think something's happened to her! The Mercury computer detected an energy surge with her crystal wavelength, and now it's not reading anything! She's... She's..."

Asuka quickly holstered her weapon and then drew the other woman up in a tight hug from behind, hearing Ami's voice trail off into choked sobs.

'Damn. No idea what she's talking about, but I guess this girl was a friend of hers,' Asuka thought.

"Usagi can't access the ginzuisho..." Ami murmured, wiping her eyes as she leaned into Asuka's embrace, "and we can't contact Pluto... She's gone. She's really gone."

"Ami, I'm so sorry," Asuka said, feeling slightly awkward to be comforting someone rather than ordering or berating them, "listen, is there anything I can do? Start an investigation? Assault a base? If you know who did this, we CAN get them."

"I have no idea," the genius Senshi said listlestly, finally pushing away her computer and staring up at the ceiling, "who could have done this? We all thought she'd be okay because she was transformed..."

Ami grit her teeth, and then slammed a fist onto the table next to her computer. "Damn it! Why weren't we out there looking for her? Maybe if we'd all searched together-"

"Ami, it's okay," Asuka said firmly, swiveling the younger woman's chair around so they could look in each others' eyes. "I'm not sure who this girl is or what she is to you, but I know you've been working frantically at that computer every day, and that you've had a lot to deal with between terrorist attacks and vampire uprisings. This is NOT your fault. You've done plenty, and there's no reason to think things would have turned out better if you'd worked yourself half to death to find this girl. Obviously if you had any good leads, you would have followed them up."

"I... I suppose," Ami said, some color returning to her face as she stared down at her feet, "but still, I... I wish I could be SURE of something, here! Senshi do not just keel over and die! Something big definitely happened!"

Asuka nodded. 'Ah, so she was a Senshi, huh? Better remember the name.' "Do you think her parents know?"

Ami shook her head. "I should tell them. In person," she mumbled, standing up slowly. Though her voice was, as expected, still sad, Asuka was glad to see that she had at least broken her cousin out of her initial panic and horror.

"I can tell the others... later. Haruka will probably want to go to the site and find out what happened," then she grimaced, "even if it means demolishing half the mountain."

"Well, need some help with that, you let me know. I've got plenty of dullards who the general public would rather see digging up mountains than patrolling its city streets."

Ami offered her cousin a tepid smile. "Thank you, Asuka-sa-"

"Asuka. Just call me Asuka," the police captain insisted, "it's way too awkward having you be so formal when all your friends address me like I'm their roommate or something."

"Thank you, Asuka," Ami corrected, "I appreciate your help."

"Well, at least somebody does," the police captain said wanly, stepping aside so Ami could get by.

The younger bluette didn't budge.

"Well? Are you going to head out now, or wait?" Asuka asked.

Ami gulped and pointed toward the door, where Hunter was poking his head in and watching the exchange, clearly ready for violence and perplexed by the lack of heated emotions and frenzied combat.

"Right, right. Hunter, go away," Asuka said, swatting the zergling over the nose, "come on Ami, I'll walk you to the door."

"Thank you again. I REALLY appreciate it," Ami said, her relief palpable.

* * *

Ranma scratched the back of his neck nervously as he waited next to a fountain, keenly aware that Junko and Tiro were laying out of sight on the other side of the plaza.

'Why the heck do they find it so much fun to meddle with my love life?' the pigtailed man thought. He didn't really resent it, as he was used to much more destructive interference in his affairs, but it still perplexed him as to why Junko would want him and Usagi together. Or him and anyone, for that matter; this wasn't the first time that the redhead had tried to pair him up with a co-worker.

Tiro was a natural voyeur, so Ranma could understand his support, at least a little. Though it still surprised him that the lecher was going to such lengths to watch another man on a date.

* * *

"I can't believe I'm doing all this work to watch another man on a date," Tiro grumbled as he checked the audio coming from the bug on Ranma's shirt. Ranma wasn't talking to himself, so there wasn't anything to overhear, but the sound of the fountain stream hitting the basin was crystal clear.

"Oh, come on. You can't tell me you don't appreciate the romance here," Junko said, nudging the other officer in the shoulder, "a confident but lonesome super martial artist and an adorable, insecure cyborg girl, living, working, and patrolling together! Once separated by the man's indifference and the girl's destined lover, at last the obstacles between them crumble away before their love!"

The redhead grinned as she clapped her hands together. "And then, sexytimes!"

"You make a compelling argument," Tiro admitted, "though it's too bad we won't actually get to watch that last part. Ranma's way too sharp for that."

Junko nodded regretfully. "Yeah, actually I agree. I'm pretty curious as to what that would be like. My own experience with robots was pretty one-sided."

Tiro took up a pair of binoculars, and then put them down again. "Wait, what did you just say about ro-"

"Look! There's Usagi-chan!" Junko pointed out.

* * *

"R-Ranma-kun! Hi!" Usagi said, her face flushed as she crossed the plaza. She was wearing a striped blouse that clung to her waist and a daring miniskirt with no socks, though her shoes were a pair of simple sandals.

"Yo! Usagi!" Ranma waved to the cyborg as she approached.

Once she stopped in front of him, she stood silently, trying to think of something to say as a sudden awkward feeling dominated the mood.

"So, your friends put you up to this?" Ranma finally asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

Usagi sighed. "Yeah. Oh! N-Not that I wouldn't want to go out with you otherwise! It's just that, you know-"

"Yeah, I know," Ranma said, nodding his head, "it's the same for me."

"Ah, so that's where that outfit came from," Usagi said, glancing down at Ranma's clothes. She wasn't sure Ranma even OWNED a shirt with buttons before today.

Then, feeling her mood lighten, Usagi turned around in a circle. "Mina-chan mostly picked these clothes out. Well, except the shoes."

"Why not the shoes? Do you like sandals?"

Usagi stopped turning, and she looked away in embarrassment. "She, uh, thought I should wear heels, but..."

"Ah, the heels broke under your weight?" Ranma asked, slipping his hands into his pockets.

Usagi flushed red as she refused to make eye contact. "It's not my fault! I'm made of metal!"

"Yeah, I know, chill out," Ranma said, finally feeling at ease as he rubbed Usagi's head, "let's go eat something."

"I hear that!" Usagi replied, brightening instantly.

* * *

"Hey," Junko mumbled as Minako approached from behind.

"Hey," Minako mumbled back as she took up a position next to Tiro, peeking over the top of the bench, "is this a good peeking spot? It's a little far to hear anything."

Tiro kneeled down on the other side of Junko. "Got that angle covered. They're just making awkward small talk for now."

Junko frowned. Something about what just happened didn't seem right.

"Okay, good," Minako offered, looking somewhat depressed, "I still can't believe no one makes high heels out of steel. There's got to be a market there SOMEWHERE."

After a moment, Junko figured it out: Tiro had been kneeling to her right before Minako had arrived and settled on the same side. He had then changed positions and was now on her left.

Tiro had willingly moved to avoid being squeezed between two voluptuous young women.

"I tried to get her to record the whole thing herself, but she's too shy," Minako continued woefully, "and Ami-chan refuses to hack into her brain computer thing, so-"

"Mina-chan, is there something different about you today?" Junko suddenly asked, "like, maybe something that people might find... threatening?"

"Huh? Threatening?" Minako asked, having no idea what the redhead was talking about, "actually, now that you mention it, I've felt REALLY good ever since I tried to tell Rei-chan about our hookup plan down at your base. I can't really put my finger on why."

"Maybe she got jabbed with a stimpack?" Tiro suggested as he peered through the binoculars, "like, one with the stronger virus mixes before Seras weakened them to get rid of the side effects?"

Junko frowned. A decent enough guess, except that wouldn't necessarily make Minako a threat to anyone, and wouldn't agitate Tiro's razor-sharp survival instincts. Looking at her fellow police officer, Junko had to consider that his movement was a subconscious reaction, a shift that even he didn't notice outright.

As interesting as these theories were, and possibly important, Junko still dropped them immediately once Tiro informed her that their target was moving.

"This is gonna be so much fun!"

* * *

Ami took a deep breath as she beheld the house that Haruka and Michiru shared, steeling herself for the task ahead.

Of course, she had been steeling herself for the past hour, going over dozens of ways to break the news, thinking of all the possible responses she might have gotten, and then divising ways to answer those questions, too.

She still felt woefully unprepared.

"I really should have told Usagi first, and let her come with me," the bluette mumbled. Leaders were supposed to do this sort of thing, right? She had enough on her plate being the brains of the Senshi and the voice of reason. Why did she have to be the bearer of bad news too?

Evidently Ami had been standing in front of the Outers' house shuffling her feet for too long, because she suddenly heard the front door open as Haruka stepped out.

"Ami? It is you! What are you doing here?" the masculine blonde asked as Michiru came up behind her, the both of them looking annoyed.

"Ah. Well..." Ami trailed off, noting that Michiru looked bemused, with her hands crossed under her breasts, while Haruka was trying not to glare as she gave Ami her full attention. "I don't suppose I'm interrupting something, by any chance?"

"We were just discussing our respective histories as far as flirting outside our relationship goes," Michiru said evenly, her smile betrayed by the vein throbbing on the side of her head.

"There's a difference between flirting and appreciating beauty!" Haruka snapped, her hands clenched into fists.

"I can't believe you can say that with a straight face," Michiru quipped, sweeping a lock of hair behind her ear.

Ami desperately wanted to back off here, telling herself that the couple was already preoccupied with their romantic troubles and didn't need any more stress at the moment. But her conscience would have none of it, and the genius Senshi swallowed before she locked her back straight and spoke.

"I have some... news," Ami hedged weakly, "it's about-"

"It's Hotaru!" Haruka said immediately, her eyes widening as Michuru's jaw fell open.

"Yes, it's about Hotaru," Ami continued slowly, taking deep breaths, "she-"

"She's okay!" Michuru cried, all traces of irritation vanishing into joy and relief.

"No, no she's not okay," Ami said sadly, shaking her head, "she's-"

"Yes she is," Haruka corrected, pointing at Ami.

"Stop cutting me off!" the bluette snapped suddenly, surprising both Haruka and Michuru and silencing them. "Listen, something big happened to Hotaru recently, and... I can't guarantee she's still alive."

"Of course she's still alive," Haruka said, sounding absurdly sure of herself.

"Would you stop arguing with me?" Ami snapped again, wondering why the couple was so sanguine about her news. "What makes you think she's fine, anyway?"

"Well, she looks okay from here," Haruka said, still pointing.

Ami blinked, and then turned around to see that Haruka had not, in fact, been pointing at her, but rather at the taxi cab parked on the street where Hotaru was negotiating the fare with the driver through the window.

"That'll be 3000 yen even, kid," the driver muttered.

Hotaru, who was still dressed in a Yukata with her lightsaber stuck in the obi, waved her hand in front of the driver's eyes. "I already paid," she said simply as she picked up her carry-out box of onigiri.

The driver, a man of caucasian descent, frowned. "What, no tip?"

"I gave you a tip too," Hotaru replied, waving her hand around again.

"Yeah, right. Kid, you could hypnotize the whole world and it wouldn't hide the fact that you're a cheapskate," the driver spat before he turned away and started to drive off.

Hotaru was in the midst of turning away as he sped off, grumbling about greedy foreigners wanting extra money just for doing their jobs, when she was suddenly enveloped in a hug that tested even her newly improved fortitude with its strength.

"Hotaru-chan! You're alive! Thank god!" Haruka cried as she crushed her adopted daughter against her chest.

"Haruka, careful! You might hurt her!" Michiru said, paling slightly at Haruka's exuberance.

Haruka quickly dropped Hotaru, her face flushing. "Oh, right, right! Sorry, I..." then she trailed off as she held Hotaru at arms' length, "actually, you felt surprisingly solid, kiddo. What happened to you?"

Hotaru scratched the back of her head as she smiled nervously. "Evil space wizard. Locked me up in an underground mountain lair for a long time while I trained in an ancient combat style from the stars."

"And they didn't have a phone in this mountain lair?" Michiru asked sternly.

"Nope. Sorry, Michuru-mama. I couldn't find any way to contact you until I was already on my way home," Hotaru explained.

"Well, as long as you're okay, that's all that matters," Haruka admitted, hugging her daughter again, though less tightly. "That aside, though, you really have filled out well."

Michiru gave a sigh, and then turned around. "You see Ami-cha-" she stopped as she realized that the genius Senshi wasn't behind her. "Where did Ami go?"

"I think she was heading into the house when Haruka-papa grabbed me," Hotaru said.

"Huh. Well, I think you should talk with her before you go. She seemed to think something bad had happened to you," Michuru said.

"Heh heh... Really?" Hotaru asked nervously, a sweatdrop rolling down her head. "Something bad? Like what?"

Before either of the adoptive parents could properly start delving into their nightmares of the wide variety of tragedies that could have befallen their daughter, Ami emerged from their home, staggering slightly as she made her way toward the three Outer Senshi.

"Ami! We found out why Hotaru was missing all this time!" Haruka called out as the bluette approached.

"Swell," Ami murmured, her gait unsteady, "what happened?"

"Evil space wizard," Hotaru said with a shrug.

"Yeah, those guys suck," Ami muttered, walking past on her way toward the street, "anyway, I'll let the others know you're okay. Later."

"Wait, Ami-chan!" Michuru called, "didn't you have some kind of news from before?" She was a bit worried about how Ami was acting like she had just suffered a concussion, but the young genius had seemed sure that something was wrong with Hotaru despite the obvious evidence to the contrary.

"Right, yeah, news," Ami said, halting as she turned her head around, "you're completely out of scotch."

"We are? Wait, how did you know that?" Haruka asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"I figured it out when I emptied the second bottle and couldn't find a third," Ami said before she hiccupped, "oh, and also, Sailor Saturn has been destroyed. Might wanna look into that. Nice to see you again, Hotaru-chan. Bye."

Both of those revelations were shocking enough that it took Haruka and Michiru several seconds to move their gazes from Ami's stumbling retreat from their house to Hotaru's embarrassed expression.

"Okay, so..." Hotaru said awkwardly as she carefully avoided eye contact, "I decided that 'planet-breaking Senshi of Destruction' wasn't really what I was looking for as a career going forward, you know? So I KIND OF absorbed the evil space wizard's knowledge and used it to purge my Sailor Crystal."

Michiru planted her hands on her hips. "You are SO grounded."

"Eugh..." Hotaru sighed wearily.

* * *

The crackle of flame suspiciously resembled cackling laughter as it spread over the brightly colored flesh, unmaking the bulging and warping imitation of matter and returning it once more to the wispy river of power that was the Warp.

Sailor Pluto glared down at the daemon as it died, its mouth lolling open to show rows of uneven, needle-like teeth and its tongue, bearing a flickering blaze at the end like some magical pilot light, twitching as it hung out of the gaping wound inflicted upon the creature. A single eye stared up at Pluto, the only one the horror had left, and even as the creature's existence was undone it stared at Pluto not with hate, pain, or fear, but rather all-consuming interest, a fascination that seemed almost mocking to come from an enemy staring at its killer."

Within seconds, the daemon was gone, and Sailor Pluto had turned away, seeking the next target.

But there was no other target. The Gates of Time crackled and sparked, but no monstrosity leapt from them. Though great streaks of black scorch marks decorated Pluto's sanctum, there was no trace of the enemy, only the combat. Every one of the invaders had crumbled into vapor, and every scaly appendage that had breached the Gates of Time had been beaten back.

Sailor Pluto was actually fairly stunned at the lack of opponents, and she had to take a moment to gather her wits.

She had won. She had beaten back the tide of monsters spawned from the artifact she was supposed to be guarding. That was good.

Taking a look at said artifact, she could see that it was sparking and that long, curling tendrils of coruscating lightning kept lashing out from the doorway. That was bad.

Hefting the Garnet Rod, she shoved it into the opening, and invoked a series of words completely foreign to every other being in the universe. With a violent shudder and a suspiciously rusty-sounding creak, the Gates of Time were sealed and deactivated, stopping anyone - or anything - from using them for any purpose until the bearer of the Garnet Rod undid the seal. That was good.

With the sealing of the Gates, Sailor Pluto finally noticed the retraction of a sustained time-stasis effect, which had apparently been covering her sanctum. The flow of time had always been more malleable and erratic here just from proximity to the Gates, but what she felt being withdrawn was no accidental fluctuation in the time stream brought about from her flinging destabilized temporal energy about with desperate abandon. It had been deliberate, controlled, and slipped into place while the otherwise vigilant guardian had been busy fighting for her life. Something - and she had a good idea what - had altered the flow of time in her chamber so that it was different than the flow in the rest of the universe, using the daemon assault as a distraction.

That was almost certainly bad.

She had been fighting for at least two hours, by her estimate. Maybe more, but it was hard for her to judge. It wasn't as if she kept a bloody clock in the nexus between space and time.

How much time had passed in the outside world?

Her first thought was "none" since she often used stasis effects to do her work before the Gates while freezing time on Earth. She quickly discarded the idea. There was no value in launching a futile attack at her while precisely nothing happened during the time she was distracted. The opposite effect, that her trial at the Gates of Time amounted to days or even weeks outside it, was far more likely.

Okay, so she might have been incommunicado for a week. A month, at the most. And so long as she had the Gates sealed to prevent further corruption or Warp incursions, she couldn't check to see what had happened during her absence.

That left her with only one feasible method for checking on the Senshi and eventually seeking their help to find and eliminate the source of this corruption. A method she despised and never would have resorted to under anything less than extremely desperate and uncertain circumstances.

Sailor Pluto had to ask for help.

* * *

Luna perked up as she heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and then got to her feet, assuming it was Makoto or Minako having come to feed her and Artemis.

It was an awkward arrangement, not because either they nor the cats had a problem with it, but simply because Luna and Artemis were now the only occupants in what had formerly been Rei's home. The very fact that one of the Senshi had to arrange a special trip to feed them continually underlined the fact that the Senshi of Mars was effectively no more, and that Rei's new incarnation was far enough separated from her old life that she couldn't be bothered to take care of her friends' cats anymore.

Luna really wanted to move out of the oppressively empty apartment, but unfortunately the moon cats still didn't have anywhere else to stay, as the dorms occupied by the remaining Inner Senshi still did not allow pets, while both Ranma's home and the DAPC headquarters were evidently off-limits to cats in particular.

Luna had never received an explanation as to why that was, but Ami assured her that if she had been allowed into headquarters she would have just been killed and eaten by something named "Hunter" anyway. So she let the topic slide.

"Makoto? Is that you?" Luna asked as she stepped into the kitchen, being reasonably surprised that she hadn't heard the sound of the front door open.

Once she saw who waiting to meet her, she was surprised for a completely different reason.

"P-Pluto! You're back!" the moon cat exclaimed, watching as the guardian of time - in her Senshi form, with the Garnet Rod resting in the crook of her arm - prepared some tea in the kitchen, looking for all the world like she belonged there.

"Yes, I am," Pluto said simply as she put the kettle on, not glancing at her host, "there were some altercations that I needed to resolve."

Though Luna looked curious, Pluto turned toward her and spoke again. "Luna, I am going to ask something... unusual of you, and I would appreciate it if the other Senshi never knew of it."

Luna raised an eyebrow at that. Pluto wasn't exactly known for being forthcoming and transparent, but it was unusual for her to ask secrecy of others. "Very well. Is something wrong?"

"Yes, yes I believe something is quite wrong," Pluto admitted as she glanced at the rapidly heating kettle, "but I don't know the extent of the damage. Tell me, has anything... STRANGE happened in the past week or so?"

Luna's neck nearly bent with the weight of her sweatdrop. "Strange? Ah, well... In the past week, you say? So one week, specifically?" On the counter, the phone started to ring.

Pluto frowned. "No, not just in the past week. If anything strange happened before then, you should tell me that, too." As it so happened, she wasn't really clear on when it was that she had last been on Earth. As the guardian of time, keeping the "current" time and date was a useless nuisance to her, and as a result she hadn't known the date or even the month in which she was last among her compatriots.

Luna was completely confused, wondering if this was some sort of test, or maybe some sort of complex practical joke. Something strange? The past two weeks had REDEFINED strange amongst a group which had never been exactly normal. But wouldn't Pluto know about all of that? Did she want details, Luna's opinion, or what?

"Well, putting aside the major surprises," Luna began, speaking louder to be heard over the ringing of Rei's kitchen phone.

"What major surprises?" Pluto asked immediately, startling Luna.

"Well..."

As Luna trailed off, the phone stopped ringing, and the answering machine turned on.

_Beep! Hey Rei-chan, it's Ami. Just wanted to let you know that Hotaru-chan came back today. She seems fine, but Sailor Saturn's gone. Probably gone for good, now that Usagi's gone borg and lost her ability to use the Ginzo... Ginzuush... her magic rock. Sorry, I'm a little drunk right now._

_Clunk!_ Luna cocked her head to the side as the Garnet Rod slipped from Pluto's fingers and onto the floor.

After a brief pause, Ami's message continued. _Wait, sorry. I completely forgot you don't live there anymore since you're a vampire... Well, then hopefully Luna and Artemis can hear this. You guys do keep complaining about being out of the loop. Whatever. Bye. Click!_

"So... yeah, there's THAT," Luna muttered, "but you probably already knew about it. I mean, it's hard to imagine becoming a cyborg and a vampire could slip under your radar."

Sailor Pluto took a deep breath.

* * *

Makoto staggered into the apartment, her ears ringing.

"That was the LOUDEST profanity I've ever heard," Makoto grumbled as she hauled a bag of cat food up onto her shoulder, "what did Artemis do now, Luna?"

"I didn't do anything!" Artemis protested as the white moon cat emerged from the bedroom. His fur was standing on end and his eyes were bugging out. "I was just sleeping when all of a sudden the room shakes and all I can hear is swearing!"

As Makoto puzzled out the degree of Artemis' innocence, a quite ragged and exhausted-looking Sailor Pluto emerged from the kitchen.

"Oh, hey Pluto," Makoto said casually as she stepped by the older Senshi to get the can opener, "you wouldn't happen to know where Hotaru is, would you?"

Pluto's eye twitched. "She's back home safe, last I heard."

Makoto started, looking surprised. "Really? That's a relief! We didn't know what happened to her!" the ponytailed girl started cutting open the cans of pet food with renewed cheer.

"She seems to have lost her Senshi powers," Pluto continued.

"What?" Makoto stopped, then shrugged and kept going. "Well, it's not like there's much demand for blowing up planets in our fights. And Hotaru's a little frail to be fighting, anyway."

"It has come to my attention that she's the THIRD Senshi to have lost her powers," Pluto continued.

Makoto gave her a curious look. "What? No, that's not true."

Any relief the guardian of time might have felt was painfully short-lived as Makoto went on to explain, "Rei-chan hasn't lost any of her powers. If anything, they're just stronger now... and powered by human blood."

"And... Usagi?" Pluto asked hesitantly.

"She has lost her powers, or at least can't remember how to use them anymore, but with all the missiles and lasers and whatnot she's got going on now, she might not miss them," Makoto explained as she emptied the cans into a pair of saucers, "but really, shouldn't you already know about this?"

"My omnipotence has been severely curtailed for the... UNforseeable future," the ancient warrior explained, "I believe a malevolent force specifically distracted me from predicting and observing these incidents."

"Oh! We were wondering why we hadn't seen you around for a while," Makoto said as she placed the saucers on the floor. "Come and get it!"

Luna and Artemis very specifically did not come and get it, probably because they were still spooked by hearing the unflappable Senshi of Pluto strip the paint from the walls with her profanity.

"So what has been done about this, if anything?" Pluto asked. It still felt extremely uncomfortable to ask someone else for news, but was still slightly less awkward than having absolutely no clue what was going on in the timeline she was supposed to be shepherding.

"Well, we flattened the vampires that turned Mars, and I think Usagi and the cops did something to those terrorist bastards that geared up Usagi. We still don't really know why they did that, though."

'Ugh. That reminds me. Those idiot fanatics still have the chronosphere,' Pluto thought.

Makoto picked up Artemis and Luna's water dishes and started filling them up. "We probably would be all over the terrorist thing, but Usagi-chan's been adapting so well to being a cyborg that she's really not that worried about them," Maokoto admitted, "it's really come in handy since she joined the DAPC."

_Crack!_

Makoto whirled around at the sound of something breaking, and was quite confused to see Pluto still standing there in a perfectly unassuming pose with her hands at her sides and a neutral expression on her face.

There was also a large hole in the wall next to her, and bits of crumbling drywall stuck to the knuckles of her glove.

"Did... Did you just punch the wall?" Makoto asked, unsure whether she should be amused or disturbed.

"No, of course not," Pluto said evenly, "but on a more important note, the Senshi CANNOT be allowed to get involved with the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment. Least of all the princess. I must speak with her immediately and correct this."

"Uh... Okay, not that I'm saying you're wrong or anything, but why do you seem more concerned about that then her being a cyborg?" Makoto asked, "or for that matter, Rei-chan being turned into an undead, blood-sucking predator?"

"Do I seem concerned?" Pluto asked calmly.

Makoto glanced at the wall. "A little bit, yeah."

The guardian of time rolled her eyes before answering, as if she was indulging an overly curious child. "Well, for one thing - and this is just for starters - if you're around them for too long Snake will almost certainly kill you."

Makoto frowned. "Okay, yeah, that's a pretty good reason. But Usagi seems to like the work, and apparently she's bulletproof, so you might need more than that to convince her."

"I'm sure I'll manage," Pluto said, "these other matters are... not less catastrophic than involvement with the DAPC, but there is also little that can be done about them. In any case, I must speak to the princess at once. Do you know where she is?"

"Not really," Makoto said, scratching her chin, "I know she's out on a date with Ranma, but only Minako-"

_WHAM!_ Makoto winced as the hole in the wall went from fist-sized to person-sized.

"By the way, Rei-chan was also hired by them," Makoto deadpanned, "and she might need the income, because she is NOT getting her deposit back for this place."

Pluto, well aware now that any illusion of unflappable wisdom had been completely ruined, all but snarled as she spoke. "No. NO, this will NOT happen. Saotome Ranma is to have NOTHING to do with the Princess."

"Oh, why not?" Makoto asked, finishing filling the water bowls and placing them on the floor. "I mean, she and Mamoru are in a rough patch right now over the cyborg thing, and if nothing else, I think it will be good for him to realize that he can't just break up with her whenever he feels like it and expect Usagi to be waiting for him to come back with open arms."

"What's at stake here is a little more than just Usagi's wedding plans," Pluto said, forcing herself to calm down, "the problem is SAOTOME."

"What's the problem with Ranma?" Makoto asked. "He seems way more decent than Snake. Or that Tuko guy. Or Yamazaki. And honestly, Kyle is nice enough, but-"

"That man eats timelines," Pluto interrupted, "the reason the princess, and all of you, should stay as far away from him as possible is because he has a peculiar habit of taking fate and stomping it flat."

Makoto looked startled by the revelation. "Wait, are you saying he's some kind of monster, or..."

"That depends on your point of view more than anything else," Pluto groused, "he is not malevolent, nor do I believe he defies destiny deliberately. I can even say that much of his interference within the timeline has been for the good. But it does not change the fact that simply being near him can unmake your future."

Then she shook her head. "But even that may be somewhat trivial at this point. Something has emerged, Jupiter. A power that we thought had been laid to rest eons ago."

Luna and Artemis finally gained the nerve to peek into the kitchen through the hole in the wall, and saw Makoto nod decisively.

"All right, fine. So what's the threat?" Makoto asked. After the robots and vampires she had wanted to get back into action anyway.

"Magic, Makoto," Pluto said, staring irritably at the head of the Garnet Rod, "this time, the enemy is magic itself."

* * *

"All right, now aim for the top, not the base or the middle," Ranma explained, "it's harder to hit but it's the only way to knock over something like that."

Below him, Usagi was leaning over a countertop aiming a pop gun at a large teddy bear with an eyepatch and a pirate hat. "Should I aim for the hat?"

"No, you'll just knock the hat off, and that won't get you anything," Ranma said, "right in the forehead is best. Like target practice."

Usagi frowned as she stared at the bear, and a moment later a white targeting crosshair appeared over the bear's forehead, while a black one appeared below it, wavering slightly. She moved the rifle barrel up, and the black crosshair moved appropriately, until the black circle fit over the white circle and the crosshairs flashed red.

_Pop!_ The cork shot out of the rifle, and the bear rocked back from the blow, teetering on its plush rear before finally rocking forward back into place.

"Awww..." Usagi whined as the booth manager chuckled.

"Almost had it! Give it another shot?" the portly man asked with a grin.

Ranma clicked his tongue as he flicked at the now empty rifle. "Not enough pressure in these things. I don't think you could win that thing with these guns."

As Usagi pouted, Ranma suddenly had an idea, and leaned in to whisper to his date specifically so that the curious booth manager couldn't hear.

"All right, gimme another!" Usagi said, frowning cutely as she slapped more money on the table.

As the manager took the bill and stepped aside, Usagi took up one of the pop guns and slowly and deliberately took aim. At the same, one of her spider-like repair droids emerged from underneath her miniskirt and dashed down her leg - its path conveniently obscured from the booth manager - before it crawled up the wall of the booth and onto the stack of pop-cork rifles that were piled at one side of the counter.

The booth manager waited patiently as the rather dim-looking blonde swept from one side of the prize rack to the other, apparently unable to decide on an item.

"Usagi-chan, wait, use this one," Ranma said suddenly, interrupting her before grabbing a certain rifle from the pile.

The booth manager raised an eyebrow as she swapped guns, and then once again took aim at the large bear.

_POW!_ The cork smashed the teddy bear clean off its rack, sending it spinning end over end before it hit the ground.

"Yes! Got it!" Usagi cheered as she pumped a fist in front of the surprised and suddenly suspicious manager.

"Just a minute," the portly man said, taking the now-empty rifle and looking it over. It sure seemed to be one of his pop-guns, and there was no obvious evidence of tampering besides the surprisingly powerful shot. And although he was wondering exactly what the pigtailed guy had whispered to his girlfriend, he'd been watching the both of them the whole time.

With a mild sigh of regret, the manager gave up looking for foul play and retrieved the pirate bear, handing it to Usagi with a reluctant "Congratulations".

"All right! Thanks!" Usagi said brightly as her repair drone scuttled up onto her shoulder before quickly slipping under the shoulder of her blouse.

The manager's eyes bugged out. "Did... Did I just see a spider crawl down your neck?"

"Don't worry, that's just where I keep it," Usagi reassured the man, who began to gape.

Ranma wordlessly took his date by the shoulders and started leading her away.

"That doesn't count as cheating, does it?" Usagi asked once the two of them were out of earshot of the booth manager, "using my drone to pump up the air in the gun?" She still had her arms wrapped around the pirate bear as she allowed herself to be more or less pushed down the sidewalk.

"Nah, you're still using his gun, so it's fair," Ranma reasoned, "it's cheating the way I usually do it, by flinging little pebbles too fast for the eye to see after the shot."

Usagi nodded. "I guess that makes sense."

"And it's flat-out illegal the way Snake does it, by insisting he use his own gun. Which is why they have posters of his put up all over the convention center now," Ranma explained, pointing to one such poster stapled to a utility pole, "so never use your own weapons at a game booth, or you'll be banned forever. I swear carnies have like a cartel or something."

"Ooh! Cotton candy!" Usagi cheered, suddenly dashing away from Ranma toward a small snack booth.

"Okay, this is on me," Ranma said as he joined her at a more casual pace, taking a stick for himself with one hand while placing some money on the counter with the other.

Usagi, having her hands full of plush bear, extended a servo arm from her shoulder, startling the cashier as the articulated mechanical arm seized the stick of a cotton candy puff in its steel clamp.

"Wh-What is... Are you..." the young man at the register started to stutter.

"It's a prosthetic," Usagi explained suddenly before the clamp rotated 180 degrees to hang the cotton candy down in front of her mouth.

The cashier did not seem satisfied by the answer, though he recovered enough to take Ranma's money and start digging around for change. "I thought prosthetics were for people who lost limbs in accidents and stuff."

Usagi nodded as she bit off a chunk of her cotton candy. "Yeah, I lost most of my body. Though it wasn't an accident at all."

Ranma just shrugged at the young man's confused expression and led Usagi away again.

"So what else should we do?" Ranma asked, "there are more game booths on the other side if you want, or we could catch that movie."

Usagi thought about it as she glanced out at the large concrete pier that stretched into the bay. They were currently walking along a boardwalk resort next to a cruise liner company, and her eyes skipped from a winding roller coaster track to a massive cruise liner that was moored opposite the fair games.

"You know, when I was a kid I always thought it would be cool to go skating along a roller coaster track," Usagi said, her eyes shining as she thought of herself zipping along the track with her rocket boosters burning, "but I am kind of hungry. We could sneak onto that cruise liner and check out their buffet!"

Ranma scratched his chin. "Well, that first one is seriously dangerous, while the second is pretty much stealing, which is against the law."

Usagi flushed as she lowered her head. "Oh, right, well, I was just thinking out loud, I didn't-"

"Yeah, so was I," Ranma admitted as he pointed to the ocean liner, "let's sneak into the liner first. We'll hijack one of the rowboats next to the pier, then scale the hull opposite the dock, where they won't be watching."

Usagi promptly brightened again. "Okay!"

* * *

"Did they just steal a boat?" Minako asked, pulling down her sunglasses as she stared out at the pier.

"Well, we don't call it stealing, we call it confiscating for official purposes," Junko noted, "and sometimes we even return them! Totally different from stealing."

"Huh. Lost sight of them," the blonde murmured as Ranma's pigtailed black head and Usagi's twintailed blond one vanished behind a massive ocean liner making port, "think they're trying to lose us?"

"Nah. If they wanted to lose us, one of them can leap tall buildings in a few good bounds and the other can fly. I don't think they'd settle for something as romantic-comedy-esque as trying to escape in a dinghy."

"They're sneaking onto the ship," Tiro noted as he bit off part of a hot dog, his headphones linked to the bug on Ranma's clothes hanging around his neck.

"They're sneaking onto a cruise liner to get some privacy?" Minako asked, turning around.

"No, they're sneaking onto a cruise liner to get lunch," Tiro corrected, "and with the price of a withered little hot dog around here, I can't blame them."

Junko sniffled as she smiled happily. "Abusing her police status for her own petty desires already! Usagi-chan really is one of us!"

Tiro frowned as he finished off his snack, suddenly looking more serious. "Hey, girls, is it just me, or... does it seem like they get along... TOO well?"

Minako and Junko looked behind them, their expressions puzzled.

"What do you mean?" Minako asked, "they're not getting along well enough to tongue wrestle, so as far as I'm concerned there's room for improvement."

"No, seriously, think about it," Tiro said, scrubbing his head with his hand, "they're acting just like any other best friends spending the day together. If they weren't male and female, there'd be no way to guess they were on an actual date. But it's like they're barely aware of each other. There's no tension, no feeling here."

"Huh. Yeah, actually, I think you have a point," Junko admitted as she planted her chin against her knuckles, "I guess I didn't really notice because I expect every pairing to end with a sexual encounter so long as they can keep from literally hitting each other."

"So what do you think's going to happen?" Minako asked, looking somewhat upset.

"They'll have a blast, eat themselves fat, and then go home to their separate bedrooms," Tiro said with a sigh, "they already have a good relationship, so why risk the drama?"

"No! No way!" Minako said, her eyes narrowing, "this is not some nine-year old's play date! This is supposed to be Usagi's big night, where she reaffirms her womanhood and finally cuts the emotional leash that Mamoru has her on! No way am I letting her pass on this opportunity because she's not in the mood!"

"Yeah! And I want to study the ramifications of cybernetic intercourse directly!" Junko complained, crossing her arms under her breasts, "there's serious science to be done, here!"

"I'd like to point out that, although I agree with you in spirit, you're both crazy," Tiro mumbled, "besides, we already smashed them together, dressed them up, and are even stalking them like a bunch of sick, perverted weirdoes. What more can we do?"

The three of them pored over that problem for a while until Junko shrugged. "Well, there's always kidnapping."

"What?" asked Tiro and Minako simultaneously.

"Kidnapping. Ranma's girlfriends get kidnapped, like, ALL the time. It's uncanny, really," Junko explained, "it's one of the reasons why I think Usagi would be perfect for him, actually; anyone capable of capturing her would have to have so much power that we'd end up dealing with them anyway, so it's not like she's inviting extra trouble for us."

* * *

Hundreds of thousands of light years away, a sleek-looking space craft bristling with weapon batteries and dotted with glimmering jewels started to move, its engines glowing softly as its knife-shaped bow swung elegantly to the side.

And then, as its crew detected someone in the deep void tempting fate, it began to accelerate, vanishing in moments as it breached the walls of reality to speed it to its destination.

* * *

"But anyway, I also think it would spice things up, you know? Usagi seems like the type to crush on a knight in shining armor, and Ranma's easily at his best when saving people in distress," Junko explained.

"Okay, fine, but how does that help?" Tiro asked. "Are you suggesting that WE kidnap her? That's-"

"That's brilliant!" Minako said, grinning.

"I was going to say 'the worst idea in the world,' actually," Tiro admitted.

"No, leave this to me!" Minako started looking around. "Over there, behind the crab restaurant! That's a good spot! Come on!"

"Mina-chan, it's possible that, in the rush of emotion and sexual tension that we're TRYING to project upon our friends, that you've lost sight of reality," Junko warned as she and Tiro followed Minako into a narrow space between two buildings, "Usagi is like, 500 percent weapon. And while Ranma is only 100 percent weapon since he can't cram extra weapons into his body, he's really good with what he has. Wouldn't it be better to wait and see if someone else attacks?"

Minako rounded the corner, and was quite satisfied to see that there was nobody behind the restaurant. "Perfect!"

"What Junko was trying to imply without actually saying is that they'll kill you dead," Tiro said bluntly as he joined the oversexed women behind the eatery, "seriously, I know you have a rep and all, but Usagi is a clumsy walking armory and Ranma is... Well, Ranma is Ranma. If you don't give up the ruse in time the man will take you apart for threatening Usagi."

"Don't worry about it, I know what I'm doing!" Minako said, not convincing the two officers one bit. "Venus Crystal Power, make-up!"

Although Minako couldn't help but notice a distinct lack of bright lights that usually surrounded her when she uttered that phrase, such concerns were completely pushed aside by the dizzying rush of power flooding her body as her costume stretched over her skin.

Her vision was briefly obscured by darkness, and then that darkness seemed to split apart from the middle, opening her field of vision again.

As her transformation finished, Sailor Venus nodded to herself. "All right, now I just need a disguise to-"

"Holy crap!" Tiro shouted as he drew his sidearm and aimed it at the surprised and alarmed heroine. "What happened to you?"

Venus blinked, uncertain what he was talking about.

Junko looked shocked, but tried to calm Tiro down. "Wait, hold on, will you? That's probably just some kind of alternate transformation or something."

"Alternate what? What are you two freaking out abo-" as she raised a hand to beckon to the pair of police officers, an important detail caught her eye: her glove was not white, with an orange trim. Instead, it was an inky black, with a pair of uneven orange streaks that led from her wrists to the back of her hand.

"Oh. OH. THAT'S what you were talking about," Venus said awkwardly as she glanced down at her body, "okay, yeah, I don't actually know what this is all about."

"You DON'T?" Tiro asked incredulously, though he put his pistol down. He didn't really get any danger vibes from the blonde, though he also felt curiously unwilling to get close enough to touch her.

"Mirror, anyone?" Sailor Venus asked, holding out her hand.

Junko quickly provided a makeup compact, and Sailor Venus held it out at arms' length to get a good view of herself.

Her new outfit was somewhat similar to Usagi's in that it was a rubbery, form-fitting suit that was mainly black. Hers, however, was also decorated by a series of irregular, bleeding orange stripes, like the inverse of a tiger's pelt, and several of them bled together to form the sigil of Venus on her chest (which she couldn't help but notice was better emphasized now than in her previous costume).

What seemed strangest, however, was the head: her entire face up to her forehead had been covered by the curious wetsuit-like costume, forming a mask with a single white stretch over her eyes that apparently acted as a visor (given that she could see through it). The suit, however, didn't touch her hair, leaving her blond mane exposed, along with her trademark red bow that sat atop it.

"Well... I guess we can skip finding a disguise, then," Sailor Venus said as she snapped the compact closed.

"Uh... Wait, you seriously didn't know about this?" Tiro asked. "We should get you checked out, then! Mercury does those convenient all-purpose scans, right? I'll call-"

"No time for that," Venus said, straightening her back as she gripped her hands together, reveling in the way the suit felt like her own skin, "we're only going to have one shot at this. I'm going to go ahead and snatch Usagi at the first opportunity."

"Why would we only have one chance? We know where they live."

"Less thinking, more doing!" Venus shouted, gripping one hand into a fist.

"No, Tiro's right. This was a stupidly dangerous plan to begin with, and now we're just ignoring a serious and suspicious change in one of our friends," Junko pointed out, "we usually try to limit ourselves to one incident of major neglect per operation."

"Look here!" Sailor Venus shouted suddenly, feeling herself get irritated at the way her friends were questioning her outfit, "you realize that if Usagi and Ranma don't get down tonight, that means that NONE of us are getting laid, right? Do you want that?"

Junko looked startled, and stepped back. "Well, no, of course not, but... wait, why would that effect us getting-"

Sailor Venus stepped up to a nervous-looking Tiro, and then extended a hand to him before she again interrupted the frightened and confused officers. "I know the risks here. I realize that something important has happened to me, and that I should really have it looked into before I embark on any crazy shenanigans. But Sailor Venus is a woman of action, and there are people that need my help so that they can start fondling each other. So I need you to trust me. Without questioning any of the things I'm saying right now."

A tear actually slid down Tiro's cheek as he steeled himself and saluted. "I... I still have the bug on Ranma, and a flare gun. If I hear something from him that would put you in danger - well, more danger, anyway - I'll shoot one up so that you can at least have some warning. Godspeed, Venus!"

Sailor Venus nodded sharply before vaulting up into the air, grabbing onto the edge of the restaurant roof and pulling herself up with ease.

The two officers left behind stared up at where they had last seen their companion, and several seconds passed until Junko spoke.

"So what do we tell everyone if she dies?"

Tiro considered the question briefly, then answered, "We'll tell them that at least it wasn't Snake's fault, like everyone expected."

"Good call."

* * *

The screams of thrilled and frightened passengers mixed with the rattling of metal shuddering against metal as the roller coaster train passed to the peak of the tracks, the cars halting briefly in front of a steep descent.

The screams intensified as the trained pushed forward, diving down the tracks at speeds that, while certainly impressive to the passengers in the cars, were carefully calculated and tested to be safe.

It was worth noting, as Usagi landed unsteadily atop the peak behind the coaster with her rocket boosters glowing brightly, that neither she nor the man squatting on her back had the benefit of any safety assurance besides their respective disrespect for their own mortality. Even so, Usagi's first concern, as usual, involved food.

"Should we really be doing this right after eating?" the blond cyborg asked as steel hooks ending in wheels folded out of the sides of her feet and clamped onto the tracks. "I don't want either of us to get sick!"

Ranma, who was holding Usagi's shoes with one hand while holding on to the top of her head with the other, decided to slip into a full seated position, letting his legs drop under Usagi's shoulders. "Well, I've been pretty much immune to motion sickness since I was eleven, and you can just close your stomach off, right? If you can even get sick in the first place."

"Oh! Okay, then!" Usagi said, staring down at the descent as her jet boosters angled themselves to thrust her straight forward.

"Hey, make sure you're not going so fast that you crash into the car ahead of us!" Ranma warned, showing a remarkably minimal amount of foresight.

Usagi frowned. 'Hey, computer, can you figure that out?'

_'Tracking target coaster car average speed... Complete. Measuring unit Cyber Moon thrust for acceleration match against decreasing linear-'_

'Actually, never mind that. Do I have brakes?' Usagi asked, cutting off the stream of gibberish.

_'Affirmative.'_

"We'll be fine!" Usagi called out, bending her knees as she prepared to take off, "hang on tight!"

* * *

Sailor Venus grinned under her new mask as she spotted her target atop the roller coaster. Yesterday she would have been shocked at the sheer recklessness required to do something like hurl yourself down a roller coaster track at jet engine speed, but right now, for whatever reason, she was feeling curiously sanguine about threats to life and limb.

Possibly because her own plan involved assaulting and provoking two of the most powerful people she knew just for the sake of getting them worked up. Who was she to judge?

Moving along the rooftops, Venus vaulted up over an arcade, clearing a booth between her and the roller coaster with ease to grab onto one of the pieces of steel scaffolding supporting the tracks.

She started to pull herself up, but then hesitated as she felt something strange about her grip on the scaffolding. Rather than pulling herself up on top of the steel beam, she placed one palm flat against the side of it, and then did the same with her other hand. And then she hung there, her palms adhering to the vertical surface well enough to support her weight.

"I can scale walls! This is awesome!" she said to herself. This must have been what Usagi had felt after being changed into a cyborg: the sudden feeling of invulnerability, the liberating feeling of your mobility suddenly expanding, and the feeling that you could tear iron apart with your bare hands!

Venus suddenly latched onto the steel beam above her, and braced herself to pull.

'ACTUALLY, maybe it's a little bit much to start ripping apart the supports to a roller coaster just to test how strong I am,' she thought, reluctantly letting go of the beam.

A sudden roaring noise alerted her to her target above, and she glanced up just in time to see Usagi and Ranma literally rocketing down the coaster tracks, a fan of sparks jetting out from behind Usagi's seemingly bare feet.

"Hmmm... Just gotta wait for a good moment when they're separated," Venus mumbled. She idly wondered what other things her mysterious new transformation was capable of. Would it replace her old power like Usagi? Would it modify and overcharge them like Rei?

Watching her "prey" as they zipped down the tracks, Venus began to worry that they were going to crash into the car ahead of them, as the pair of superhuman cops were moving far faster than the coaster train was, and the gap between the two speeding objects was shrinking fast.

Usagi, thankfully, had accounted for this eventuality, and a loud shrieking noise - that made Venus' skin crawl, for some reason, as if her outfit was shuddering against her flesh - followed an even bigger shower of sparks as the cyborg girl applied the brakes built in to her rail grips.

In addition to stopping Usagi long before she was in danger of colliding with the coaster train, this had the added "benefit" of flinging Ranma off her shoulders and sending him flying through the air and then through the wall of the coaster car maintenance shed.

With her target thus separated from her protector, Sailor Venus vaulted up a pole and then jumped from beam to beam, rapidly approaching the stunned and confused Usagi.

* * *

Usagi's eyes widened as she stared at the hole in the wooden wall of the shed, only faintly aware of people from the roller coaster car ahead of her shouting in surprise from seeing her on the tracks behind them.

The coaster operator was shouting at her too, and seemed to be trying to stop the coaster train behind her, but that was hardly important to her now.

'Stupid, stupid, stupid! I did it again! Why do I always injure Ranma with my clumsiness?' Usagi bemoaned as she unhooked her feet from the tracks, 'seriously, I checked for brakes but didn't think about a seat belt? Stupid!'

She adjusted her engine boosters to go collect her date, but before she could lift off, the cybernetic woman was suddenly tackled from the side, lifted from the tracks, and then carried off into the air.

Usagi was so stunned by this that at first she didn't react at all, still staring at Ranma's crash-landing point as it grew more and more distant.

"Muah ha ha! I have you now!" cackled a distorted but curiously familiar voice next to her.

Finally snapping out of her shock, Usagi whirled her head around to see what, exactly, had suddenly seized her and carried her away.

The woman - for it was impossible to mistake the curvaceous figure for a male - certainly looked somewhat creepy in the black and orange suit, but any fear or outrage Usagi felt didn't survive a hard look at the mysterious kidnapper's hairstyle and rather out-of-place bow, much less the symbol brightly portrayed on her chest.

"Uh... Mina-chan?" Usagi asked, a sweatdrop rolling down her head, "is that you?"

Sailor Venus landed heavily on the ground from her dramatic leap, startling other people on the pier as the boards underfoot groaned from the impact.

"Mina? Who's that?" Venus said, droplets of sweat appearing on her forehead, "I'm the sexy super-villainess, the Venusian! You, my dear, are coming with me!"

Usagi's eye narrowed. "Uh huh. 'The Venusian'? Really? You couldn't even choose a different planet?"

"That's enough, my lovely little captive! It appears your man has emerged!" Venus cackled, turning to face the roller coaster.

Ranma sighed as he poked his head out of the hole he had made in the maintenance shed, wondering if he'd end up having to pay for the damage to the carnival ride.

'Who's supposed to pay for damaged or destroyed buildings on a date, anyway? You'd think there'd be an etiquette thing for that,' he wondered to himself as he searched the tracks behind him for his companion. 'Does the guy have to do it, or do they split the bill? Or do I get off the hook because it was her idea?'

Despite some yelling at him from the operating booth of the coaster, Ranma's first concern is that Usagi wasn't where he had left her, out on the tracks.

'Oh, there she is,' he thought as he glanced some commotion on the main boardwalk adjacent to the carnival ride, 'wait... is she being kidnapped? Seriously? Damn it!'

Ranma groaned as he leapt away from the maintenance shed, grabbing onto the scaffolding and swinging down toward the ground. 'I knew it. I KNEW dating again was a bad idea! It just brings everyone trouble,' he groused as he landed at the edge of the crowd, causing it to part in front of him as the nearby civilians recognized a confrontation and evacuated the area.

"Okay, what is it this time?" Ranma asked, gesturing to the figure wearing some sort of full-body wetsuit and mask. He had to admit it looked good on her, in a sexy villainess kind of way, though the bow on top of her hair looked completely out of place.

Sailor Venus suddenly slung Usagi over one shoulder, eliciting an awkward squawk from her captive and incidentally showing off Usagi's underwear to the martial artist.

"I'm Meteora!" Sailor Venus shouted proudly, her voice booming yet still distinctly feminine, "I'll be taking your girlfriend for a little ride, Saotome! You don't mind, do you?"

"Meteora? What happened to Venusian?" Usagi grumbled, still having no clue what was happening but resigning herself to being a captive.

"Hush! I'm making this up as I go!" Venus hissed back under her breath.

Ranma shook his head. "Yeah, that's not happening, lady. Why don't you just put Usagi-chan down, and we can-"

Venus cut him off by thrusting an arm at him, and a thick black chain suddenly burst from her wrist, capped by a dagger-length spike.

"Whoa!" Surprised though he was, Ranma still managed to pull himself out of the way of the projectile, but was just surprised again when the spike suddenly curved to the side in mid-air to curl around him, wrapping around his abdomen. "Hey! What the hell are you?"

"If you want your girl back, you'll have to do better than that!" Venus shouted with glee as she pulled Ranma off his feet and flung him toward the wall of a cake shop, letting the chain separate from her wrist.

Ranma managed to flip himself around in the air and land feet-first against the wall softly enough not damage it, but was quite frustrated when the length of chain kept trying on its own to wrap him up further to bind his arms and legs.

As he watched the strange kidnapper leap away with her cybernetic victim, Ranma grabbed the end of the chain and started to unwrap himself before it managed to pin his arms. Much to his frustration, the chain seemed to be actively fighting him the whole way. The links were made of some firm charcoal-colored substance and were curiously sticky with some sort of semi-fluid that was dark as pitch and haphazardly strung between and within the chain links, as if the whole length had been dipped in crude oil.

Nonetheless, whatever force was animating the chain wasn't strong enough to stand up to Ranma, and after a few seconds of mumbled swearing Ranma threw it on the ground in disgust. It promptly started to dissolve into nothing, and the martial artist turned away to give chase to this new troublemaker.

* * *

"Uhm... Mina-chan?" Usagi asked tentatively as she was carried through the air on Venus' shoulder, her twin tails whipping through the wind behind them. "Did you... turn evil, by any chance?"

Sailor Venus clicked her tongue as she landed atop the ocean liner that Usagi and Ranma had infiltrated earlier. "Well, that was SUPPOSED to be the disguise, but I guess the bow sort of gives it away to anyone who knows me well enough."

"No, but... the costume, the kidnapping, the new powers, the fact you just shot a SPIKE at Ranma-kun..." Usagi began ticking off items.

"It's just an act, girl! Don't worry about it!" Venus insisted. "Besides, I'm doing this for the sake of love!"

"Oh, okay then," Usagi mumbled awkwardly, "but I'm still a little curious about the new costume and powers..."

"Yeah, I know, I'll look into that later. All right, here he comes," Venus mumbled, watching as Ranma followed her path toward the ship. "Come and get me, do-gooder!" she taunted before leaping straight at the pigtailed man while he was still on the pier.

Ranma prepared to meet her head-on to try and grab Usagi off the mystery woman's shoulder, but was forced to turn out of the way when Venus' free hand suddenly extended rapidly, her fingers sharpening and twisting together before stabbing forward like a lance.

Venus landed past him, and the whirled around, her hand suddenly curving and sharpening into a scythe blade that swept over Ranma's head as he ducked.

"Drop the cyborg!" Ranma demanded as he drove a fist into the blonde's stomach, following with a left hook that sent her staggering back.

Ranma was aiming to hit the arm carrying Usagi at the joint to get it to go slack, but suddenly the woman in black and orange leapt backward, her free arm lashing another semi-sentient chain at him.

"Okay, seriously, stop trying to impale Ranma-kun!" Usagi complained. She couldn't see most of the fighting, given that she was facing the opposite of wherever Venus did, but whenever the chain was summoned it made an odd combination of a slurping and rattling noise.

Venus tsked as Ranma grabbed the spike out of the air this time and simply pounded it into the ground, robbing it of most of its freedom of movement. She turned around and started to flee again, leaving the chain behind.

Ranma groaned as the blondes moved down the pier again, and was about to give chase once more when something ocurred to him.

"Why isn't Usagi resisting at all?" Ranma wondered aloud. Sure, he'd always thought it was weird how easy it was for his rivals and various villains to capture girls who were formidable fighters in their own right, but Usagi wasn't just some fighter, she was a living weapon with enough ordnance to level a small city (maybe a large one if she tried, but Ranma didn't give her THAT much credit). He could think of a dozen things off the top of his head that she could have done to at least slow down her captor, but Usagi just seemed annoyed at this whole ordeal.

'Okay, maybe there's more to this than I thought,' Ranma considered, deciding to jog after his date at a much more casual pace than before, 'she's probably in no actual danger here.'

* * *

"So how's it look?" Junko asked as she leaned over Tiro, who was watching the whole affair via binoculars.

"Well, it's a good thing we took Ranma's weapons. They seem to be keeping it pretty low-key, so I don't think anybody's going to die after all," Trio explained, much to Junko's relief.

"Hey! Hey, you there! Officer-san!"

Junko clicked her tongue. She and Tiro were in uniform, and the person approaching them appeared to be an employee from the roller coaster group.

"Please help me! There's a bunch of hooligans who were running around on the coaster tracks, and-"

"We understand. We're in the middle of apprehending those individuals," Junko said as she crossed her arms under her breasts.

Below her, Tiro snorted, but said nothing. Junko was better than he was at lying with a straight face, so it was best to leave this to her.

"Currently it looks like they're having some sort of running superhero battle, but as soon as they're done we'll address the situation," Junko said.

The man nodded slowly, looking reluctant. "If you say so. And what about the others?"

"What others?"

"I saw a man in a long coat and a hood just after that girl jumped off the coaster rails, and accidentally ran into him," the civilian explained nervously, "he had a metal mask over his face, and when I bumped into him, his coat opened briefly and I think he had a gun!"

Junko was silent for several seconds. "A... metal... MASK, you said?"

The young man nodded. "It was very well-made. It actually looked like it was part of his face!"

Junko was silent for several more seconds before turning to Tiro. "Tiro-kun, do you-"

"Yep. Now that I know what to look for, I can see six-no, seven of them scattered through the area. Looks like they're taking cover and positioning themselves for an attack," the lecher explained.

"Huh..." Junko planted her fists on her hips. "See? I knew if we just waited long enough a violent calamity would happen on its own. Minako-chan is totally jumping the gun."

"You called it," Tiro agreed, pointing his flare gun into the air.

* * *

"Come on, hot stuff! You want your girl back, don't you?"

Ranma rolled his eyes as the girl clad in black started lashing a chain at him like a long, living whip, the spike at the end spinning and jabbing at him wildly every chance it got.

Now that he'd considered the idea though, Ranma could see that this whole affair had been completely staged. Every time this "Meteora" girl got a head start on him, she'd wait for him to catch up, and she didn't seem to be leading him into any traps, either. Besides that, she insisted on fighting with one hand to keep Usagi trapped over her shoulder, even though it was proving to be a massive hindrance.

Ranma swatted the chain spike out of the air, and then stuck his hands in his pockets as the whole chain curled back, like a wary snake. "Are you done yet? I can see you're not taking this seriously, so if you quit it now I won't have to hurt you."

Sailor Venus frowned under her mask. Though she wasn't very familiar with the limitations of her new costume, she had still been going easy on Ranma because of Usagi's complaints. But if he was going to taunt her?

Well, she didn't want to see anybody hurt, but Venus decided then and there that Ranma could lose a little bit of ego and live.

The pigtailed man was reasonably surprised when the blonde's free hand and forearm suddenly swelled up tremendously and then split apart on a horizontal seam, revealing a maw of large, saw-edge teeth that resembled an alligator's jaws in both size and shape. A slobbering, serpentine tongue hung from the side, and a disturbing growl came from the horrifying arm-jaws.

Ranma was actually really interested in what his opponent was going to do with her newly mutated appendage, but Usagi was much less curious.

"All right, that's enough!" the blonde cyborg shouted, suddenly grabbing onto Venus' hair and pulling herself upright.

"Ow! Hey! Stop that!" Venus complained.

"No, YOU stop it! Put me down right now, Minako!" Usagi snapped, her eyes flaring blue briefly.

Ranma blinked, quirking an eyebrow. "Minako-chan? That's you? Oh, now I remember where I saw that bow before!"

Sailor Venus groaned at seeing her efforts up to now finally collapse entirely, and reluctantly set down her fellow blonde. "I was just doing it to help set the mood..."

"That makes no sense at all, but forget that!" Usagi said as she stared at the new incarnation of the Senshi of Venus, "what on Earth happened to you?"

Venus shrugged. "What? It's just a new costume, probably."

Usagi pointed to the other blonde's left arm, which was still cracked open slightly and drooling a small puddle of luminescent silvery fluid onto the ground.

"Oh, that. Right..." Sailor Venus held up the admittedly strange appendage and willed it back to its original form. The tongue immediately slipped back between its teeth, the lips of the mouth melted together, and the entire limb deflated rapidly back into the shape of her hand.

"There! Back to normal!" Sailor Venus said, spreading her fingers to show Usagi.

Usagi's uncharacteristically stern expression didn't budge. "There is nothing NORMAL about this, Mina-chan. What happened?"

Venus sighed and then shrugged. "I don't know, I just transformed and ended up like this. Who cares?"

"I care!" Usagi shouted, throwing her arms up into the air, "what if this is some kind of plot to control you, like Rei-chan, or build a super-Senshi, like..."

Usagi trailed off as flare suddenly shot up into the air, originating from behind a few restaurants next to the roller coaster. "What was that?"

Minako frowned, then narrowed her eyes at Ranma. "You're not planning on attacking me any more, are you?"

"I wouldn't mind, actually. I kind of wanna see what you can do with that arm-jaw thing," Ranma admitted, "but no, I wasn't planning on it."

Sailor Venus sighed in relief. "Okay, good. I guess it's a false alarm, then."

_Chak! Click! Ch-chak! Clack! Chnk!_ Her theory was challenged by the sound and sight of several figures, whom had been scattering amongst the pedestrians, drawing rifles from their long coats and aiming them at the trio. Glowing red lenses glared from underneath dark hoods, and the soft whir of geared machinery mixed with the hiss of pneumatic pistons as the hidden attackers tracked their targets.

There was no time for sarcastic quips, though each of the three had been rushing to think of one. Ranma leapt for the two blondes and dragged them them both to the ground, slamming them prone over the pier surface as the first volley of bullets sailed overhead.

"Shield! Shield now!" Ranma demanded as he released the girls and rolled over so that he could see their new opponents.

"Okay! Got it!" Usagi shouted in a panic, her combat bracers slipping around her forearms before a large hex-grid panel of translucent energy spread from each of them. She sat up and tried to angle them to cover her and Ranma, barely putting the shields in place before a hail of large-bore rifle rounds spattered against them in a blaze of lights and sizzling metal.

"Geez, if they had shown up a little earlier, then I wouldn't have bothered to kidnap you myself!" Venus complained, crawling on her hands and knees over to her friends.

"You guys get up and get to a rooftop or something!" Ranma shouted over the crack of the rifles, "I'll take out the ones near the civilians!"

Before the blondes could respond, Ranma's body vanished in a blur of light blue and disembodied grumbling about his lack of weapons.

"Mina-chan! Do you think you'll be okay on your own, or should I stay with you?" Usagi asked, holding her shields close together in front of her as she stood up uncertainly.

Sailor Venus frowned as she stood behind the cybernetic princess. She honestly didn't know how well her new suit would hold up in a gun battle.

Rather unluckily for her, a couple of cyborgs emerging from behind a games booth behind the pair were more than willing to experiment.

_Brak! Brak! Brak! Brak!_

Usagi whirled around as she heard the gunshots behind her, and gasped as she saw Sailor Venus staggering as the black and orange "cloth" on her back spasmed and writhed.

_Brak! Brak! Brak!_ This of course left her own back unprotected, and the blond cyborg screamed as several rifle rounds pounded against her shoulder blades, severely testing the resilience of her dermal armor.

She staggered and grabbed onto Venus' arm, and the two modified Senshi spared a moment to lock their gazes (insofar as Usagi could lock gazes through Minako's mask, anyway).

Venus whirled around, the twisted, flattened bullets falling out of her back while a black chain blasted from her wrist toward the nearest enemy cyborg's chest.

Usagi too turned, her shield sweeping in front of another burst of gunfire as a pair of servo arms unfolded from her shoulders, both of them sporting laser cannons as her eyes flared blue.

"Dates are sacred occasions of romance, the refuge of couples from the everyday burdens of their lives!" Usagi called out as gunfire continued pounding against her shields, "for interrupting so many people's special time together, you will not be forgiven!" Usagi's clothes began to shift into her combat bodysuit as a suspiciously familiar red warning began blaring at the edge of her vision. "I am Cyber Moon, andOHGODRUNINCOMINGARTILLERY!"

* * *

Igov smirked as he kneeled down at the edge of a rooftop, watching as the girl with the ponytails fled the area before an artillery barrage slammed into the pier, smashing a hole into the boardwalk.

He raised one hand and briefly picked the cigarette out of his mouth as he reviewed the progress of the assault. The cyborgs hadn't done much more than surprise and separate the targets - including that strange one in the black suit and the bow, whom he didn't recognize - which was about all he could really hope for given the caliber of his opponents and the relative weakness of his cyborg grunts.

Still, it would be enough. "Igov taking to field. Keep artillery primed for Igov signal, and fall back after salvo four."

_Affirmative, General. May they perish in a storm of flame and iron!_ came the enthusiastic reply from his skull-mounted radio.

"Indeed, Comrade! Igov engaging!" the Russian said happily as he stuck his cigarette back in his mouth while his chronosphere activated.

* * *

Usagi dashed frantically across the pier as the boardwalk disintegrated behind her in several bursts of flame and splinters, several times feeling the pier underfoot shake as massive holes were torn in the structure.

Glancing at a cyborg in front of her which was slowly moving into her path, a red targeting crosshair blinked over it before both of Usagi's lasers activated.

_SHWEEM!_ Two bright red beams cut toward each other, meeting at the middle of the crosshairs before continuing onward as the projector power petered out, slicing the cyborg into a squashed X pattern that had four chunks of the mindless drones tumble onto the ground.

Usagi didn't waste much time observing the grim efficiency of her weapons, and darted behind a large wooden stand for holding fresh fish as gunfire rattled behind her.

Poking her head out, her shoulder lasers rose to attention as well, spitting red lances across the smouldering pier and spearing a few of the remaining cyborgs as they tried to get a good line of fire on Sailor Venus or come to grips with Ranma, who had reappeared in their midst and was breaking them down at close range.

_'Warning! Chronoshift detected!'_ her computer suddenly flashed in the corner, causing the cyborg Senshi to frown.

"Something about this whole thing seems really familiar..."

"Igov is pleased you remember!" came a deceptively cheerful voice from behind her speaking with a perfectly stereotypical Russian accent.

Usagi's laser cannons swivelled around, but the blonde yelped as Igov suddenly grabbed both of the servo arms, bending them away from him and forcing the laser projectors to spin and pitch pitifully as they tried to find a firing angle.

"Igov find evidence that you visit Wraith laboratory recently," the Russian said amiably, the shafts of Usagi's servo arms slowly crumpling in his grip, "Igov disappointed to miss you, so Igov come meet you today!"

Usagi looked over shoulder fearfully, staring up into the glowering red lens of Igov's optical peripheral and the general's rather insincere grin.

"If this is about the computer, it was just a joke! I'm sorry!" Usagi cried, panicking as the Russian loomed over her.

"Igov had to organize firing squad for that server," Igov said somewhat bitterly, his friendly demeanor evaporating, "then was forced to upload playback of execution to other servers as warning. Was massive waste of time."

"That's not really my fault!" Usagi complained.

"True, Igov admit it; this but crushing you rather cathartic, so Igov will do this anyway," said the Russian cyborg before suddenly pulling his arms in opposite directions, tearing Usagi's servo arms out of their shoulder ports in a burst of sparks and ripped metal.

"AAAaaahhhh... huh," Usagi's initial scream faded as she blinked, "actually, that didn't hurt at all. I guess those arms can't feel pain."

"Acknowledged," Igov said as he reared back a leg, "now let us check rest of you."

* * *

Halfway across the city from the sudden ambush in his apartment, Mamoru Chiba suddenly snapped to attention.

"Usagi!" He could feel the usual warning that his fated lover was in danger, and as usual wasted no time in transforming into his alter ego in a flash of light and flurry of rose petals.

Tuxedo Kamen rushed toward the window and threw it open, but hesitated just before he leapt out.

Turning around, the masked guardian picked up a broom, and then took off his top hat and cape, placing both atop the broom head before he took a deep breath and stuck it out the window.

_BLAM!_ The broom shook in Kamen's hand as a shotgun blast peppered it, and in the next instant Tuxedo Kamen was out the window, having snatched his hat and cape from the decoy and sprinting like all the terrors of Hell itself were hot on his heels.

As the damaged and discarded broom bounced onto the ground outside Mamoru's apartment, Snake emerged from the rose bushes in the garden outside, a deep frown on his face.

"Tsk. Clever son of a bitch. I'll get him next time," the American promised darkly, his utterly pointless and baseless grudge deepening as he slunk back into the bushes.

* * *

"Ow..."

Sailor Venus slowly picked herself up, having been caught close enough to one of the artillery blasts to be knocked to the ground. That aside, though, the effects of being caught WAY too close to a heavy mortar shell were curiously muted; her body throbbed all over, but she was completely in one piece, and the ringing in her ears had faded in seconds, despite the blast being deafeningly loud.

Glancing down at her body, she saw that much of her new costume had been shredded, leaving wide expanses of bare, but conveniently unharmed, skin between the writhing strips of black and orange.

Writhing. Okay, yes, her costume was definitely writhing like a living thing, and the black strips were definitely regenerating and spreading back over her, repairing itself to once again conceal her soft, vulnerable flesh.

'All right, maybe there might be more to the costume change than I considered,' Venus thought as the dark fluid of her costume crawled up over her eyes again. She knew that, logically, she should be alarmed and probably terrified at being wrapped in possibly living goo that was able to alter her hands into gigantic, snarling, toothy jaws. Yet somehow her nerves were calm, and she felt no revulsion or need for caution.

_Clomp! Cha-chak!_

Of course, that also could have been because she was still in the middle of a battlefield, and had far more immediate and obvious threats to contend with, one of which was now aiming a heavy automatic shotgun at her head.

Lashing out her hand, a chain smacked the shotgun to the side just before it discharged, tearing strips of the wooden pier to hot splinters just next to the Senshi's leg. Lunging to her feet, Venus slashed her hand at the cyborg, her fingers swelling and tapering to long razor claws in the split second before they shredded flesh and bone alike, ripping the harder metal components out in a spray of cerebral gore.

_Brak! Brak!_ Another burst of gunfire slammed into her side, though she had realized by now that the bullets seemed to do little serious damage to her. The impacts themselves felt like bee stings, complete with a lingering pain mild enough not to hinder her movement. Significantly unpleasant, surely, but no longer lethal.

Whipping around as the decapitated cyborg wobbled comically, Sailor Venus fired another chain, this time sticking the spike at the end into the cyborg's abdomen.

"Get over here!" she shouted, pulling hard with the arm attached to the chain while she clenched her claws into a fist. That fist suddenly swelled even larger while short, curved spikes emerged around the knuckle, and Venus felt a definite increase in that hand's mass as she swung at the incoming soldier, smashing the over sized knuckles into it and utterly crushing the chest armor as well as most of the chest behind it.

As the cyborg jerked and quaked from most of its bodily structure shattering, Venus grabbed hold of the spike still embedded in its stomach and then, with but a thought, melded the spike with her hand at the same time that it lengthened and flattened into a proper blade.

_Shwwwk!_ Wrenching her new sword-arm upward, Venus released another spray of bodily and mechanical fluids into the air before the two halves of the dead cyborg collapsed.

"Well... that was... different," Sailor Venus mused, glancing at the long, curving blade that her left arm had become, and the mace head that had become of her right. They had even melded perfectly with her color scheme, the blade edges and spike points standing out in bright, blazing orange to the oily black of her weapons that used to be arms. There were other colors too, but that was mostly because of gore smeared over them.

It was strange. Minako Aino was not fond of close combat at all, but she had resorted to it immediately here, almost as a reflex. More to the point, she had brutally and without hesitation ripped through the bodies of things which - if perhaps far enough from humans to kill without worrying about repercussions - looked an awful lot like people, and bled like them too. Bled a LOT, in fact.

Sailor Venus probably would have reflected further upon her transformation, but another round of gunfire jarred her back to the matter at hand, though thankfully the salvo didn't seem to be aimed at her this time.

Turning, she watched as Ranma took on a group of three cyborgs, wrenching the gun from the first one and then pulling it in front of the return fire from the others. He then started a short-range firefight using one of the cyborgs as a shield.

'Well, as expected, Ranma can handle himself. I wonder how Usagi's doing?' Sailor Venus thought as she began searching for the other blonde.

"AAAAAAAAAUGH!" screamed Cyber Moon as she flew through the air without the aid of her jet boosters. "OW!" a burst of wood shards blasted upward as she bounced off the pier, and before long she was rolling haphazardly toward the edge of the dock.

_Thonk!_ The cybernetic Senshi yelped again as she slammed face-first into a huge anchor leaning against one of the pier supports, which stopped her momentum toward the water at the cost of another of another chunk of brain cells.

'Okay, so Usagi-chan isn't doing so well,' Venus thought as she looked over to where her princess had come from, 'and no wonder...'

Venus' face darkened as she recognized the figure stomping over the breadth of the boardwalk.

"Not you again! Back for round 2, are you?" Sailor Venus shouted, her hands shrivelling to their normal proportions as she glared at Igov.

The effect was mostly lost as Igov couldn't see past the white visor patch over her eyes, but the Russian halted nonetheless before tapping the peripheral unit over his ear. "Igov does not recognize you. Do you have grievance with him?"

"Damn straight I have grievance!" Venus shouted, her fingers suddenly lengthening into talons. "Today the Senshi are going to take you down!"

Igov quirked an eyebrow. "Igov not sure what you have to do with Senshi, but will not matter in two second."

"Venus!" Cyber Moon shouted breathlessly as the inside of her skull rang with the sound of alarm klaxons and her computer helpfully highlighted the area around Venus that was about to be demolished. "Move! Artill-!"

_BOOM! BOOM! BA-BOOOM!_ The cyborg girl flinched as her friend started moving too late, and was subsequently swallowed by explosions. Horrified, she staggered to her feet even as much of the pier collapsed into the water in front of her, salt water mixed with soggy chunks of scorched wood raining down onto the boardwalk.

"Young women these days are into all sort of troublesome thing," Igov said with a sigh as he clasped his hands behind his back, "cybernetic enhancement, vampirism, living combat suit... Igov not be surprised to find cultist witch among you next."

* * *

"Hachoo!" went Hotaru.

"Bless you," Haruka said, offering her adopted daughter a tissue, "so what were you saying about your curfew?"

As she wiped her nose, Hotaru glanced around to make sure Michiru hadn't entered the room, and then waved her hand in front of Haruka's face. "I was just saying, I don't really need a curfew."

"Yeah, I guess you don't really need a curfew," Haruka said reluctantly, as if the judgment had been the result of hard negotiation and debate.

"And grounding me is a little harsh. I'm not a kid anymore," Hotaru continued, repeating her hand gesture.

"Okay, I guess it is unreasonable to ground you just because you destroyed Sailor Saturn, one of the guardians of our solar system, in exchange for a creepy old man's dark powers which he had used to try and possess you," Haruka said with clear regret, "it's unfair to treat you like a child when you show such good judgment."

Hotaru frowned, and then waved her hand yet again. "Also, you should think of a better way to phrase that for when Michiru-mama asks."

"Gotcha."

* * *

Cyber Moon clenched her teeth as her left arm split apart, revealing yellow tubes of crackling energy while her hand broke apart into a field projector for the disruptor cannon.

"It's time someone sent you to the trash compactor where you belong!" she shouted, aiming the two shuddering barrels in the Russian's direction.

Just as her targeting scanner appeared, the general thrust his left arm forward, a small cartridge bursting out of his own hand toward her just as waves of white and blue started to wrap around the general.

Moon switched her attention to the incoming munition instantly, and lashed her free hand at the cylinder, trapping it with a tractor beam and freezing it in place in the air. With a snap of her wrist, she sent the grenade hurtling to the side, letting it land on an empty stretch of pier that had been mercifully spared damage until the concussion grenade tore a hole in it.

The process barely took three seconds, but when she once again moved to focus on her opponent, he was no longer in front of her, and she was getting that irritating warning about chronoshifts again.

"In Soviet Russia..." Igov began as he grabbed Cyber Moon from behind, seizing her shoulder before wrapping his arms around her torso and crushing the surprised blonde against his chest, "trash compact YOU!"

"AaaaaaaAAAAAAARGH!" Sparks spat from grinding metal plates as Usagi's body was slowly squeezed within Igov's grip, her dermal armor collapsing and internal mechanisms folding under the intense pressure. "L-Let me... GO!"

"Igov wonders if your cybernetics are compatible with cyborg soldier body," the Russian general mused happily as he felt the smaller cyborg's internal structure slowly crumple, "Igov like to recycle, you see."

"I'll recycle your skull after I take it off your shoulders!" came a familiar, and angry, shout from behind the two cyborgs.

_WHAM!_ The anchor that had previously met with Moon's cranium suddenly smashed into Igov's, staggering the Russian as the sheer mass of the object proved far more than he could shrug off. He didn't let go of Cyber Moon, however, and the blonde yelped as her captor threatened to fall forward on top of her.

"Let her go you Commie jackass!" Ranma growled as he let the anchor drop to the ground, drawing the rifle he had taken from one of the cyborg grunts.

As Igov tried to shake the blow to his head, Ranma took aim at the Russian's left elbow at point-blank range, almost touching the gun's muzzle to Igov's coat.

_Brak! Brak! Brak! Brak!_ Sparks and bits of metal flew as Ranma tried to shoot out Igov's elbow to loosen his grip, and a rumbling growl came from the general as Igov came back to his senses.

_Thwack!_ Igov swung out the arm being shot up, striking Ranma in the stomach and sending the martial artist hurtling painfully through the air.

This gave Cyber Moon the opening she needed, though, and she forced her jet boosters to open and fire, despite a lengthy bit of red text scrolling across her field of view that seemed to be trying to explain why that was a bad idea.

_BLAM!_ Moon's boosters vomited a massive fireball as they exploded, though this at least managed to separate her and Igov by blasting them apart with violent force.

Between the explosion and the severe blunt trauma, Igov was desperately trying to reboot his vision, which kept flickering between static and a shaky, grayscale view in front of him that kept lagging like a broken video game.

"Resourceful as always, little pests," the general spat, "but you will pay for your earlier incursion! Igov will see to this!"

"You already ruined our date, smashed up the boardwalk, blasted my friend, and my ribcage feels like a crushed soda can!" Cyber Moon complained as she stood up, smoke belching from the scorched exhaust jets in her back. "Isn't that enough?" Ranma was standing up opposite the Russian, nursing a spreading patch of blood spreading through his shirt.

Igov blinked as his visual sensors seemed to stabilize, only being interrupted occasionally by flickers of static. "Actually, you have point. Igov should quit while ahead."

Then he moved his hand up to tap the peripheral mounted over his eye and ear, preparing to designate the next artillery target, "but Igov always greedy, yes?"

_Kapwang!_ The Russian cyborg's head suddenly pitched to the side as a .50 caliber round smashed into into it, breaking the radio system built into Igov's skull and prompting a long string of foreign expletives.

* * *

"Nice shot!" Junko said, lowering her binoculars as she pumped a fist into the air.

Tiro let out a breath he was holding as he pulled up the scoped anti-material rifle. "Thanks. I wish I could have gotten it when he was crushing Tsukino, though."

"Hey, any little bit helps," Junko pointed out as she raised her binoculars again, "I'm surprised you even keep a gun that big in your car."

"That's Snake's doing, obviously," mumbled the lecher, "always wanting me to be ready to fight at a moment's notice."

"It can come in handy," Junko agreed as she dropped her binoculars again. "So! Yutchzky's looking pissed. You want to flee in terror toward the streets or into the ocean?"

"OCEAN. No way that iron monster can swim," Tiro said, nodding, "ladies first."

"Don't be too proud to scream!"

* * *

Sailor Venus slowly opened her eyes to behold an endless expanse of murky blue.

Water. It was water. She was in the water.

As her mind realized this, backtracking to the brief series of events that had led to her tumbling into the ocean, her surroundings started to become clearer, with details fading into focus all around her. Bits of wood and blood swirling in the ocean currents. Small fish, scattering around her. An artillery shell that had struck water without detonating, its twisted, warped metal form spinning in slow motion as it sank.

'Am I alive? I... I don't feel anything.' Despite the very real possibility of severe injury, she forced herself to remain calm. She had faced death before, and she would do it again with the dignity expected of a warrior.

_'You are NOT dead,'_ whispered a voice in her head, freaking out far worse than the possibility of shuffling off this mortal coil.

'The hell? What? Who are you?' Venus demanded, trying to move her head around to search her surroundings. It was difficult, as her entire body felt numb, but with some effort she managed to crane her neck forward enought to glimpse her own body.

She was mostly naked, which was slightly surprising if not quite a problem at the moment. The only traces of her mysterious new outfit were several thick black strings wrapped unevenly around her torso and legs.

_'I am... Venus. Minako. Us. We are one.'_

The Senshi of love was not so easily mollified. 'No, what are YOU? As in, where did you come from and what do you want?'

_'What am I...'_ The voice sounded curious as it repeated the question, and Venus watched in alarm as the threads of darkness wrapped around her seemed to expand and then rise up off of her, stretching into a new form. This amorphous blob of costume formed what looked like the head of her new outfit, complete with a white strip where her eyes would be.

Her costume stared down at her, its semi-liquid body writhing and fraying in the water. _'Your word. Alien.'_

'Okay, fine. So what do you want?' Sailor Venus thought, fairly bemused.

_'Host... Partner... To become one with you, Minako. To learn. To live. To become your weapon and your shield.'_ In the middle of what approximated the creature's "chest", a bright, glimmering jewel poked out from the folds of liquid black, _'Together we will become Sailor Venus, destroy your enemies, and save-'_

'Hey! Is that my sailor crystal?' Venus thought angrily.

The jewel immediately sunk back into the alien suit, out of sight. _'No. I didn't... What crystal? I didn't see any crystal,'_ it claimed unconvincingly.

'That is totally my sailor crystal! You stole it! That's why you appeared when I transformed!' Venus accused.

_'No, I just... borrowed it,'_ insisted the living costume, _'without permission. It was necessary for the union...'_

'All right, look, if you're going to be crawling around over or in me all the time, we're going to have to set some ground rules. But first, put my sailor crystal back!'

The alien creature seemed exasperated as it sunk back down over Venus' body, its pitch-like form seeping over her skin. _'There is not much time. I can only sustain you from suffocation for so long. Above is the enemy.'_

A distinct note of smoldering rage was evident in the creature's thoughts as it turned its focus to the battle presumably going on overhead. _'That man seeks to harm our friends! Our loved ones!'_

'"Our" loved ones?' Venus wondered.

_'Yes,'_ the living costume answered, brushing aside the question, _'we will save them! We will stop him! We will DESTROY anything in our way!'_ The alien's agitation quickly exploded into furious hatred, and Sailor Venus could literally feel her chest burning in anger as her costume began to expand over her once again. Its emotions echoed and amplified her own, and the Senshi's concerns about being wrapped in an intelligent alien life form were washed away in a tide of rage.

* * *

"Usagi! You okay?" Ranma said as he dashed over to his date while Igov was busy cursing and smacking the side of his head uselessly.

Cyber Moon whimpered as she mentally requested a damage report, and was extremely unhappy to see a complicated diagram of her body appear, all of it flashing red and covered in tiny "DANGER" tags.

"I don't think I am, actually!" Moon admitted, trying to activate her combat bracers and getting only a jolt of pain and a burst of sparks from her wrist as a result. Her entire body ached, and her cerebral computer kept complaining about "core damage" or something.

"First, Igov kill you," the Russian growled as the blades of his Tesla claw emerged from his right arm, turning it into a massive pincer crackling with electricity, "then, Igov track down sniper to take as prisoner. Then, Igov KILL prisoner later, just to make sure it count as atrocity," the general snarled.

Ranma wasted no more time and swept Usagi off her feet to carry her, intending to drop her off behind some cover before returning to fend off Igov by himself.

That plan was shot completely to Hell as Igov swung his Tesla claw at the martial artist, tagging Ranma with a wispy gray tendril. As soon as he did, Cyber Moon found herself moving at a slow walk across the scarred and blasted pier, even though a glance down revealed Ranma legs positioned as if he was sprinting in slow motion.

"Wh-What? What did you do?" the blond cyborg stuttered, demanding a quick survey of her weapons that might still work.

"Is stasis field. Chronosphere energy dispersion unit generate localized time-space pocket around single solid object," the Russian cyborg explained as he walked up to the pair, though he seemed to be moving somewhat unsteadily, "will wear off. But not before Igov gut you both."

"Not if I can help it!" Cyber Moon shouted, sitting up in Ranma's arms to aim a single fist over his head.

_Fwoosh!_ In what Igov had to admit was a very surprising attack, the smaller cyborg's forearm separated at the elbow as micro-jets popped open and activated, launching the disengaged forearm forward in a classic rocket punch.

_Clang!_ Igov swatted the fist out of the air with his free hand, causing Cyber Moon to pale in shock.

"Fool. You think Igov not consider rocket fist when designing weapon arsenal?" the Russian demanded with a condescending sneer that Cyber Moon thought was completely unnecessary under the circumstances. "Is critical design flaw! Cannot use primary extremity as projectile! What if you need later? Like for picking up pieces of boyfriend? Is going to be hard with one arm!"

_Bzrt!_ With a flare of electricity arcing over the three scythe-like pincers, Igov stopped barely two feet away from the couple and raised the weapon over Ranma's oblivious head

_Bwoom!_ The dock underfoot exploded outward in front of the Russian, and Igov staggered back in shock as a massive set of black jaws full of razor-edged teeth burst out of the water and splintered wood to clamp onto his Tesla claw.

"You keep your filthy claws off them!" Venus shouted, pulling herself up onto the pier and revealing that the mouth was attached to the end of her right arm.

"You are one slobbering all over Igov arm... With your arm..." the Russian general started to argue, but trailed off uncertainly. "Igov not even sure what going on anymore." Regardless, he grabbed onto the strange appendage with his free hand, attempting to rip away the snarling maw chewing fruitlessly on his forearm.

_Crack!_ His confusion wasn't helped when Ranma hit him with a jump kick and then bounced off to land behind him.

"Thanks for the hand! Er, mouth. Hand-mouth?" Ranma was very obviously not carrying Cyber Moon anymore, and much to Igov's frustration he couldn't see the other cyborg anywhere.

Sailor Venus grinned under her mask, and the fingers of her free hand morphed into long, vicious claws as she reared it back. "We've got you nooooWAUGH!" She shouted in surprise as Igov tugged her right off her feet and then flung her at Ranma, causing the morphed jaws to come apart in a burst of dark, shredded goo.

Ranma was prepared to catch her, but Venus managed to twist around in the air before tapping the ground with enough force to send her bouncing up over his head to land safely behind him.

"You shrug off bullets, you survive artillery... Just what are you?" the Russian asked curiously, already setting the coordinates for a long-range chronoshift. At this point there were too many unknown factors to try to fight Ranma, especially given that the other cyborg was out of sight and he had already suffered damage to his sensors. Staying was an unnecessary risk, and unlikely to bear fruit.

Sailor Venus idly waved her "damaged" hand that had been morphed into jaws and teeth, and the dripping black ooze retracted itself and hardened back into the shape of a human hand. "Who are we?"

She crossed her arms in an X over her chest, and her costume started to quake and shudder visibly all over her body.

"We are VENUS!" Dozens of black chains wrapped loosely in threads of glowing orange erupted from all over her body, curving in the air and lancing toward Igov all at once.

"Hmph. Dos vidaniya, Venus," Igov said as crackling blue energy wrapped around his body.

Ranma winced as the volley of chains and pointed blades crashed into the spot Igov had been standing, smashing apart the pier and each other briefly before they halted in the air. Then the chains started drawing back, pulling the two-dozen or so weapons with them as they were sucked back into Venus' bodysuit.

"Where'd he go? Watch out!" Venus shouted as her chains vanished into her costume, and her long blond hair whipped back and forth as she searched for their opponent.

"I think he took off," Ranma mumbled, glancing down at the blood stain on his shirt. "I don't sense anything, and he was kind of outmatched between the two of us."

Venus turned toward Ranma, and her mask suddenly came apart, withdrawing from around her face and dissolving into her collar. "What about Usagi? What if he gets to her?"

"I dropped her off in that shop over there," Ranma said, pointing to a small souvenir shack that had been evacuated already, "if he was going after her, we'd know it. Besides, I'm pretty sure we knocked out his scanners already."

Venus sighed in relief, although she still kept her eye on all the convenient high points. "Is she all right?"

Ranma walked over to the game booth he and Usagi had stopped by earlier, and picked up Usagi's stray forearm out of the hole it had made in the structure. "She's hurt pretty badly, but her repair bot things are on it. By the way, when you said earlier that 'we' were Venus, were you talking about me, or..."

The martial artist trailed off as he turned around again, for Sailor Venus was gone.

* * *

"Well, that was way harder than it needed to be," Venus groused as she hopped off the top of a restaurant and landed behind it, on the edge of the water.

Junko and Tiro were waiting for her, and the former waved brightly to beckon the Senshi of love over to them.

"Are you okay? You took a few bad hits out there," the redhead asked as Venus approached.

The blond Senshi willed her costume away as she walked toward the pair of officers, and the striped black bodysuit seemed to come apart all around her, the suit stripping itself away into a few isolated strands of darkness that themselves seemed to melt into Minako Aino's street clothes.

"I feel a bit... confused, but I'm not hurt," Minako explained as she held up a hand and observed her palm. A tiny puddle of black ooze leaked into the middle of it, seeming to come from nowhere, "this guy is pretty tough."

"Guy? As in a living thing?" Junko asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Yeah. It's like an alien that's attached to me or something. I'll have Ami-chan look into it later," Minako mumbled, shrugging, "but forget that, how are our loveable superweapons doing!" she chirped brightly.

"Um... Not that I don't love me some hot gossip, but are you SURE we should shrug off the living alien costume for now?" Tiro asked, wiping some water out of his eyes.

"Look, like I told Usagi-chan, you let ME worry about the completely unknown life form that's attached itself to me without my knowledge and turned me into some sort of living salad shooter," Minako said firmly, planting her fists on her hips, "you just concentrate on invading our closest friends' privacy."

"Well, if you say so," Tiro said reluctantly, walking over to where the radio receiver was stashed underneath an unreasonably large scoped rifle.

"I'm serious, don't worry about it. Right now it's more important to make sure all our efforts so far to set them up haven't been for nothing," Minako insisted, "also, why are you both all wet?"

"Tactical cowardice," Junko and Tiro responded in tandem.

* * *

"Hey, how're you holding up?" Ranma asked as pushed open the door to the souvenir booth.

Usagi was seated on the floor in her street clothes, nursing her elbow socket as one repair drone scuttled over her back, tending to the damage caused by the rifle fire and jet engine backfire. The other drone had crawled into her stomach cavity to tend to her internal systems, and a constant stream of mostly incomprehensible data rolled across her field of vision, attempting to keep her informed of the repair progress.

Usagi herself looked somewhat bitter rather than frightened or pained, sullenly turning away from the pigtailed man. "I'll be okay, I think. I'll see Tuko-san tomorrow to make sure everything important is working."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Here's your arm," Ranma said, holding out the appendage.

Usagi sighed as she took it with her free hand and started jamming it back onto her elbow. "I can't believe I lost to him again."

"Who, Igov?" Ranma asked, snorting and then patting Usagi on the head. "He's been a fighter for most of his life before they turned him into an unstoppable killing machine. You can't take him on alone."

"But YOU do!" Usagi pointed out.

"Yeah, well the same thing applies to me, actually," Ranma said with a shrug, "the important thing is that we all get out of this alive, yeah?"

He gave her another rub on the head, causing the blonde to blush as she finally managed to snap her arm back into place.

"All right. And... thank you for saving me," Usagi said, trying not to make eye contact as her cheeks glowed pink.

"No problem," Ranma said as he leaned down and slid his arms under Usagi's legs, "though you should make sure to thank Minako-chan next time you see her, too. Hup!"

Usagi was startled as she suddenly found herself hoisted up into the air, bridal-style, and her blush got darker as Ranma started carrying her out onto the pier.

"W-Wait! What are you doing? I can still walk!" the cyborg girl protested.

"So what? You're still more injured than I am, and you should stay still as much as possible so your little spider things can do their job. Don't worry about it," Ranma said breezily.

Usagi turned her head away. "But... aren't I heavy?"

"Hell yeah, you are," Ranma said just as breezily.

"HEY!" Usagi shouted, suddenly turning her head back. Her face was still bright red, but for a somewhat different reason now, "you can't just tell a girl that she weighs a lot! Where's your sense of delicacy?"

"It doesn't matter how much you weigh," Ranma said blithely, carrying his date toward the street and into view of a few people who had stumbled upon the scene of the damaged boardwalk after it had been evacuated and were wondering what had happened. "I'll support you and protect you anyway."

Usagi was fairly stunned at how serious he sounded, and froze as he locked eyes with her and continued.

"And if you get even more weapons and get even heavier, then I'll just get stronger so that I can keep supporting you. I'm not going to let you down."

Usagi kept staring up into Ranma's eyes, completely lost for words. That Ranma had survived this long, that he had done as well as he did, already defied belief. She herself had seen plenty of amazing and bizarre things, but the confident power Ranma projected seemed to roll off of him in waves, allowing her to feel his strength and sincerity.

"R-Ranma?" Usagi asked suddenly, stuttering as her blush returned full force, "it's kind of hard to ask you this right now, but..." she gulped, and glanced down shyly, "is there any way you could..."

As she trailed off, Ranma halted and tilted his gait so that they were more or less eye level with each other. "Yeah?"

"Could you... go back and get my other arms?" the blond cyborg said nervously, "Igov tore them off earlier and I think he left them next to that seafood booth."

"Ah. Okay."

* * *

"Awwwwwwww!" Minako cooed as she, Junko, and Tiro all huddled around a small radio transceiver, "that was adorable! Right up until that last part. That bit about picking up dismembered parts is kind of a turn-off."

"Not all of us can put aside such minor concerns as discarding tertiary limbs for the sake of a good lay," Junko admitted, "besides, Ranma-kun respects practical people! It's still a point in her favor!"

"So after this comes the trek back home," Tiro said, giving a thumbs-up, "and then, sexy times!"

Minako nodded brightly. "Yup! It looks like we're all done here! Nothing can get in their way!"

* * *

Tuxedo Kamen frowned as he leapt another rooftop, halting his dash across the city. He could still sense Usagi, but his sense of urgency had faded, a sure sign that whatever danger she was in had abated.

'Well, I think I'll visit her anyway and make sure she's all right,' the reincarnated prince decided, leaping down into an alleyway and emerging onto the streets in his civilian form. 'We haven't seen each other in a while, and I know that she's been getting closer to those lunatic police officers. Maybe it's time we talked things out.'

* * *

_Shunk!_

Hotaru slid her window open and then glanced back at the note she had left on her bed, ensuring that everything was in place before she leapt out into the yard.

Landing in a stealthy crouch, Hotaru glanced about to make sure she wasn't seen, and then idly closed the window behind her with a mere twitch of her finger.

Satisfied that her escape had been successful, and took off toward the street, almost tripping on her oversized pants before catching herself and moving on.

She was currently wearing some of Haruka's old clothes, including an old T-shirt and sweat pants, both of which were obviously too large for her but better than her own wardrobe, which was now all too small.

First, she had to get a new outfit. Luckily Haruka had agreed to that without needing any Force persuasion, so she wouldn't have to use mind tricks to steal herself a new wardrobe. While she didn't feel terribly guilty about tricking people into giving her free meals and taxi rides, she didn't want to make a habit of psionic-assisted theft.

'So first I'll get some real clothes, and then I think I'll go greet Ranma! What'll he think when he sees me again?' she thought, giggling girlishly before leaping up onto the roof of the house adjacent her own and dashing across it.

* * *

Deep in the basements of the DAPC headquarters, a pair of bright red eyes glowed fiercely in the stagnant darkness within a certain ornate, sealed sarcophagus.

The target of the irate gaze was a small silver watch that lay at the edge of the container. With not a single ray of light penetrating the area, the watch would have surely been useless to most, but the only occupant of the macabre bed had no trouble observing the infuriatingly slow clock hands.

'As soon as dusk breaks, Ranma and Usagi have got a LOT of explaining to do,' Rei thought to herself.

* * *

Daemons diced: 3  
Cyborgs smashed: 9 (not counting Usagi, anyway)  
Power-up sub-plots approaching full circle: 2  
Receipts written up by hypnotized people that will probably determine the outcome of a lawsuit: 2  
Really bad ideas that still worked out: 2

End Chapter 14


End file.
